Term premium and equity premium in economies with habit formation

In this paper we investigate the size of the risk premium and the term premium in an representative agent exchange model economy where households preferences are subject to habit formation. As a novel feature, we develop theoretical measures for risk premium and term premium that can be used even when the consumption growth process is serially autocorrelated. We find that habit formation increases risk aversion significantly but increases much more the aversion to variations of consumption across dates. This induces a substantial increase in the precautionary demand of short term assets and a significant fall in the precautionary demand of long term assets. As a result, the term premium increases substantially with habit formation. Next we calibrate our model economy and examine the quantitative predictions of our theoretical measures of equity premium, risk premium and term premium. In line with previous literature, we show that it is possible to find a reasonable calibration for which the equity premium is that observed in the data. However, we find that around 70 percent of the equity premium is just term premium. That is, a very large fraction of the increase in the equity premium is due to the asymmetric effect that habit formation has on the precautionary demand of an asset depending on its maturity

Land reform and individual property rights

This paper gives a rational to the land reform processes that many latin American countries haveexperienced during this century. The reform usually consisted of transferes of land, withoutcompensation, from the owners of large estates to the landless peasants. The peasants, however,did not receive the individual ownership of the land. This was the case of Bolivia, México and Perú.This paper suggests that this type of reform was a measure intended to favor not the peasantry,but the landed elite who traditionally has held the political power in these countries. If the rents ofthe land are decreasing with the total amount of privately owned regime. I develop a modeleconomy in which all the individuals vote on the land to be expropriated to the landed elite; landand labor are complements in the production process. For economies in which land is therelatively abundant factor, the equlibrium features an amount of privately owned land less than thetotal and no peasant is given individual ownership of the land received.Land reform, property rights, voting, land endowments

Minimum consumption and transitional dynamics in wealth distribution

This paper investigates the evolution of wealth distribution in a one sector growth model along its transition path. A key feature of the model is that a household's consumption cannot fall below a positive level each period. This requirement introduces a positive association between the intertemporal elasticity of substitution and household wealth. Households only differ in their initial holdings of capital. The model is calibrated to match some key statistics of the US economy. The level of inequality in the wealth distribution of our artificial economy has a n inverted Ushape. The level of wealth inequality and its evolution resembles that of the US economy. However, our model illustrates that the existence of a Kuznets curve is very sensitive tothe sources of growth: whether it is driven by productivity growth or capital accumulation. Additionally, our model predicts an upsurge in wealth inequality following the productivity slowdown in the 1970's

Credit and inflation under borrower’s lack of commitment

Here we investigate the existence of credit in a cash-in-advance economy where there are complete markets but for the fact that agents cannot commit to repay their debts. Defectors are banned from the credit market but they can use money balances for saving purposes. Without uncertainty, deflation crowds out credit completely. The equilibrium allocation, however, is efficient if the government deflates at the time preference rate. Efficiency can also be restored with positive inflation. For any non negative inflation rate below the optimal level, the volume of credit and the real interest rate increase with inflation. Our results hold when idiosyncratic uncertainty is introduced and households are sufficiently impatient but in one instance: efficiency cannot be restored if the deflation rate is nearby the rate of time preference. Our numerical examples suggest that the optimal inflation rate is not too large for reasonable levels of patience and risk aversion. Finally, we present a framework where the use of money arises endogenously and show that it is tantamount to our cash-in-advance framework. Our results hold in this modified environment

Family ties and unemployment

In this paper we build a model economy in which the prevailing family structure arises endogenously as a response to labor market conditions. In this model the members of the household (parents and young adults) either work in the market, search for a job, or produce a household good. Parents feel altruistically towards their o¤spring. Our …rst …nding is that search e¤orts of the unemployed members of the family are strategic substitutes. The second one is that, everything else equal, young adults leave their parents’ house if they receive a su¢ciently high wage; otherwise, they stay. In the latter case, both young adult’s and spouse’s search e¤orts are lower, since the spouse’s opportunity cost of working in the market is greater when the employed young adult stays at home. As a result, both youth’s and female spouse’s unemployment rates are higher. This result is in line with the evidence we have for Spain

House prices, sales, and time on the market : a search-theoretic framework (Supplementary material)

In this document we present additional results for our main paper. First, we prove some properties of the steady state of our benchmark economy. Then, we present an alternative calibrationHouse prices, Sales, Time on the market, Search frictions, Competitive search

House prices, sales, and time on the market : a search-theoretic framework

We build a search model of the housing market which captures the illiquidity of housing assets. In this model, households experience idiosyncratic shocks over time which affect how much they value their residence (e.g. the location of their job could change). When hit by a shock, households become mismatched and seek to buy a new home. Yet they take time to locate an appropriate housing unit and to sell their current home. Competitive forces are present in the housing market since, by posting lower prices, sellers increase the average number of buyer visits they get and sell their property faster. We characterize a stationary equilibrium for a fixed housing stock. We then calibrate a stochastic version of the model to reproduce selected aggregate statistics of the U.S. economy. The model is consistent with the high volatility of prices, sales and average time on the market, the positive correlation of prices and sales, and the negative correlation of prices and average time on the market observed in the data. This is not the case when we consider the perfectly competitive version of the modelHouse prices, Sales, Time on the market, Search frictions, Competitive search

On the user cost and homeownership

This paper studies the determinants of housing tenure choice and the differences in the cost of housing services across households in an overlapping generations model with household-specific uninsurable earnings risk and housing prices that vary over time. We model houses as illiquid assets that provide collateral for loans. To analyze the impact of preferential housing taxation on the tenure choice, we consider a tax system that mimics that of the U.S. economy in a stylized way. We find that a mixture of idiosyncratic earnings uncertainty, house price risk, down payments and transaction costs are needed for the model to deliver life cycle patterns of homeownership and portfolio composition similar to those found in the data. Through simulations, we also show that a rental equivalence approach (relative to a user cost approach) overestimates the mean unit cost of housing by approximately 3 percent

The wealth distribution with durable goods

This paper studies the effect that illiquid assets and collateral credit frictions have on the level of wealth inequality in a standard model of ex-ante heterogenous agents with idiosyncratic uncertainty. We calibrate our model so that its steady state statistics match selected aggregate statistics of the U.S. economy and data on the earnings distribution. We find that adding illiquid assets and collateral credit frictions decreases wealth inequality decreases slightly relative to an economy with liquid assets and no credit frictions. The effect is small because these frictions mostly affect poor households that account for a small fraction of aggregate wealth. Nevertheless, our richer model allows us to study other dimensions of wealth inequality. In particular, our model replicates the fact that financial assets are more concentrated than total wealth, while residential assets are less concentrated. Furthermore, we document that, in the U.S., the earnings and housing distributions are remarkably similar. Our model can account for this fact so long as the earnings process is fairly persisten

FAMILY TIES AND UNEMPLOYMENT

In this paper we build a model economy in which the prevailing family structure arises endogenously as a response to labor market conditions. In this model the members of the household (parents and young adults) either work in the market, search for a job, or produce a household good. Parents feel altruistically towards their offspring. Our first finding is that search efforts of the unemployed members of the family are strategic substitutes. The second one is that, everything else equal, young adults leave their parents' house if they receive a sufficiently high wage; otherwise, they stay. In the latter case, both young adult's and spouse's search efforts are lower, since the spouse's opportunity cost of working in the market is greater when the employed young adult stays at home. As a result, both youth's and female spouse's unemployment rates are higher. This result is in line with the evidence we have for Spain.Family Ties; Household Good; Unemployment.