Publications

Mortgage refinancing responses to interest-rate declines differ sharply across income groups: lower-income borrowers refinance less often and with longer delays, leaving substantial unrealized savings. I show that monetary-policy easing generates a refinancing response concentrated among higher-income borrowers, and develop a structural model in which income-dependent inattention and hassle costs are necessary to match the data. Counterfactual attention interventions strengthen the consumption response to rate cuts, with most of the additional gains accruing to lower-income households.

Why does the same housing-demand shock generate larger booms in some places than in others? This paper shows that demographic age structure helps explain housing-boom vulnerability. Evidence from OECD countries, U.S. counties, and HMDA mortgage data suggests that younger economies are more boom-prone, a pattern rationalized by a housing OLG model in which more households are near the life-cycle tenure-adjustment margin.