A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks

We propose an alternative generator architecture for generative adversarial networks, borrowing from style transfer literature. The new architecture leads to an automatically learned, unsupervised separation of high-level attributes (e.g., pose and identity when trained on human faces) and stochastic variation in the generated images (e.g., freckles, hair), and it enables intuitive, scale-specific control of the synthesis. The new generator improves the state-of-the-art in terms of traditional distribution quality metrics, leads to demonstrably better interpolation properties, and also better disentangles the latent factors of variation. To quantify interpolation quality and disentanglement, we propose two new, automated methods that are applicable to any generator architecture. Finally, we introduce a new, highly varied and high-quality dataset of human faces.Comment: CVPR 2019 final versio

Decentralized Borrowing and Centralized Default

In the past, foreign borrowing by developing countries was comprised almost entirely of government borrowing. Recently, private firms and individuals in developing countries borrow substantially from foreign lenders. It is not clear whether the observed increase in private sector borrowing leads to overborrowing and frequent defaults by governments in developing countries. In this paper, we develop a tractable quantitative model in which private agents decide how much to borrow but the government decides whether to default. The model with decentralized borrowing increases aggregate credit costs and sovereign default risk, and reduces aggregate welfare, relative to a model with centralized borrowing. Private agents do not internalize the effect of their borrowing on economy-wide credit costs and thus would like to borrow more than the socially efficient level. Depending on the severity of default penalties, decentralized borrowing may lead to either too much or too little debt in equilibrium. The introduction of decentralized borrowing substantially improves the model's empirical fit in terms of matching observed debt levels and default rates.Sovereign Default, Sovereign Debt, Private Borrowing, Capital Flows

Impacts of Homeownership Education and Counseling on Homebuyer Purchasing Power: Summary of Findings

In addition to reducing defaults and foreclosures, homeownership education and counseling is often claimed to help families achieve homeownership in the first place by helping them to navigate the homebuying process, improve their credit, and access favorable financing products. This study tests an approach to quantifying this benefit by estimating the amount of increased purchasing power that results from homeownership education and counseling. While the results are preliminary, they provide early suggestive evidence that high-performing homeownership education and counseling agencies may provide quantifiable benefits that exceed their costs of assistance. The study also makes recommendations for how data could be collected on a more systematic basis to track and assess these benefits

Solving the incomplete markets model with aggregate uncertainty using the Krusell-Smith algorithm

This paper studies the properties of the solution to the heterogeneous agents model in Den Haan, Judd and Juillard (2008). To solve for the individual policy rules, we use an Euler-equation method iterating on a grid of prespecified points. To compute the aggregate law of motion, we use the stochastic-simulation approach of Krusell and Smith (1998). We also compare the stochastic- and non-stochastic-simulation versions of the Krusell-Smith algorithm, and we find that the two versions are similar in terms of their speed and accuracy.

Uninsurable individual risk and the cyclical behavior of unemployment and vacancies

This paper is concerned with the business cycle dynamics in search-and-matching models of the labor market when agents are ex post heterogeneous. We focus on wealth heterogeneity that comes as a result of imperfect opportunities to insure against idiosyncratic risk. We show that this heterogeneity implies wage rigidity relative to a complete insurance economy. The fraction of wealth-poor agents prevents real wages from falling too much in recessions since small decreases in income imply large losses in utility. Analogously, wages rise less in expansions compared with the standard model because small increases are enough for poor workers to accept job offers. This mechanism reduces the volatility of wages and increases the volatility of vacancies and unemployment. This channel can be relevant if the lack of insurance is large enough so that the fraction of agents close to the borrowing constraint is significant. However, discipline in the parameterization implies an earnings variance and persistence in the unemployment state that result in a large degree of self-insurance.

Social Security with Rational and Hyperbolic Consumers

The present paper studies the role of social security in an economy populated by overlapping generations of individuals that have time-consistent or time-inconsistent preferences, face mortality and individual income risk, borrowing constraints as well as progressive income taxes. Our simulations start from an artificial equilibrium where social security is completely neutral. Next we introduce successively alternative deviations from neutrality in order to isolate the various economic effects of social security. The latter are mainly the insurance provision against mortality and income risk, the negative liquidity effects for young households and the provision of a commitment technology for present-biased hyperbolic consumers. Our simulations indicate that the positive effects of social security dominate the negative ones for a wide range of parameter combinations. For our central parametrization social security induces an overall welfare gain which amounts to roughly 1.5 percent of aggregate resources in the hyperbolic model and a welfare loss of about 0.5 percent of resources in the model with rational consumers.social security, stochastic general equilibrium, hyperbolic consumers

Accounting for the Changing Role of Family Income in Determining College Entry

Assessing the importance of borrowing constraints for college entry is key for education policy analysis in the U.S. economy. I present a computable dynamic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations and incomplete markets that allows me to measure the fraction of households constrained in their college entry decision. College education is financed by family transfers and public subsidies, where transfers are generated through altruism on part of the parents. Parents face a trade-off between making transfers to their children and own savings. Ceteris paribus, parents who expect lower future earnings transfer less and save more. Data from the 1986 Survey of Consumer Finances give support to this mechanism. I show that this trade-off leads to substantially higher estimates of the fraction of constrained households compared to the results in the empirical literature (18 instead of 8 percent). The model also predicts that an increment in parents' earnings uncertainty decreases their willingness to provide transfers. In combination with rising returns to education, which makes college going more attractive, this boosts the number of constrained youths and explains why family income has become more important for college access over the last decades in the U.S. economy.College Enrolment, Borrowing Constraints,Parental Transfers, Household Savings, Dynamic General Equilibrium Models