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Working Paper
Do Household Finances Constrain Unconventional Fiscal Policy?
When the zero lower bound on nominal interest rate binds, monetary policy makers may lack traditional tools to stimulate aggregate demand. We investigate whether ?unconventional? fiscal policy, in the form of pre-announced consumption tax changes, has the potential to meaningfully shift durables purchases intertemporally and how it is affected by consumer credit. In particular, we test whether car sales react in anticipation of future sales tax changes, leveraging 57 pre-announced changes in state sales tax rates from 1999-2017. We find evidence for substantial tax elasticities, with car ...
How Recessions Impact Household Net Worth
Recouping net worth lost during three recessions proved uneven for those with the least wealth.
Working Paper
Tax Credits and the Debt Position of U.S. Households
This paper investigates the effect of tax credit receipt on the outstanding indebtedness of households. In particular, we use data on zip code level indebtedness to explore whether debt levels and past due amounts change more dramatically during tax refund season in those zip codes where households receive greater Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) refunds. We see a substantial decline in debt past due in high tax credit zip codes during tax refund season indicating that some recipient households use tax refunds to repair their balance sheets. At the same ...
Journal Article
Determinants of Housing Values and Variations in Home Prices Across Neighborhoods in Cook County
From 2007 to 2009, the U.S. underwent one of the worst recessions in its history, a recession triggered by an unprecedented, international financial crisis that resulted from institutional portfolio concentration in securities backed by home mortgages, and the collapse of that securities market. The period saw a wave of defaults and foreclosures that spared almost no communities in metropolitan areas throughout the country (Bajaj and Story, 2008). Loan defaults and foreclosures, which had tended to be concentrated in lower-income and minority neighborhoods, spread to new and diverse ...
Working Paper
Toward a Framework for Time Use, Welfare, and Household Centric Economic Measurement
What is meant by economic progress, and how should it be measured? The conventional answer is growth in real GDP over time or compared across countries, a monetary measure adjusted for the general rate of increase in prices. However, there is increasing interest in developing an alternative understanding of economic progress, particularly in the context of digitalization of the economy and the consequent significant changes Internet use is bringing about in production and household activity. This paper discusses one alternative approach, combining an extended utility framework considering ...