The Federal Reserve Board eagle logo links to Board's home page

International Finance Discussion Papers
The International Finance Discussion Papers logo links to the International Finance Discussion Papers home page Housing and Debt Over the Life Cycle and Over the Business Cycle
Matteo Iacoviello and Marina Pavan
2011-1032  (October 2011)

Abstract:  We study housing and debt in a quantitative general equilibrium model. In the cross-section, the model matches the wealth distribution, the age pro.les of homeownership and mortgage debt, and the frequency of housing adjustment. In the time-series, the model matches the procyclicality and volatility of housing investment, and the procyclicality of mortgage debt. We use the model to conduct two experiments. First, we investigate the consequences of higher individual income risk and lower downpayments, and .nd that these two changes can explain, in the model and in the data, the reduced volatility of housing investment, the reduced procyclicality of mortgage debt, and a small fraction of the reduced volatility of GDP. Second, we use the model to look at the behavior of housing investment and mortgage debt in an experiment that mimics the Great Recession: we find that countercyclical financial conditions can account for large drops in housing activity and mortgage debt when the economy is hit by large negative shocks.

Full paper (1330 KB PDF) | Full paper (screen reader version)

Keywords
Housing, housing investment, mortgage debt, life-cycle models, income risk, homeownership, precautionary savings, borrowing constraints

Related Material
Technical Appendix (243 KB PDF)   Appendix

PDF files: Adobe Acrobat Reader   ZIP files: PKWARE


Home | IFDPs | List of 2011 IFDPs
Accessibility | Contact Us
Last update: December 30, 2011