with Óscar Jordá, Katharina Knoll, Dmitry Kuvshinov and Alan M. Taylor. This paper answers fundamental questions that have preoccupied modern economic thought since the 18th century. What is the aggregate real rate of return in the economy? Is it higher than the growth rate of the economy and, if so, by how much? Is there […]

with Thomas Steger — American Economic Review, Vol. 107, No. 2. How have house prices evolved over the long run? This paper presents annual house prices for 14 advanced economies since 1870. We show that real house prices stayed constant from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, but rose strongly and with substantial cross-country variation […]

The Great Recession has focused renewed attention on the role of household leverage in the business cycle. Household debt overhang and the ensuing process of deleveraging are often cited as factors holding back economic recovery. This paper studies the relationship between household debt and economic performance during the Great Depression in the U.S. on the […]

in: Hubert Bonin, Niels-Viggo Haueter, Alfredo Gigliobianco, and Harold James (ed.) Public Policies and the Direction of Financial Flows, Bucharest 2012 This paper tracks the history of government intervention in the U.S. mortgage market between 1932 and the 1960s, a period in which the system for housing finance underwent a fundamental transformation. Whereas prior to […]