Tag Archives: Mortgage

In the JEEA 14(4) (August 2016) Klaus Adam and Junyi Zhu argue that unexpected price-level movements generate sizable wealth redistribution in the Euro Area (EA) … The EA as a whole is a net loser of unexpected price-level decreases, with Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain losing most in per capita terms, and Belgium and Malta being net winners. Governments are net losers of deflation, while the household (HH) sector is a net winner … HHs in Belgium, Ireland, Malta, and Germany experience...

The Economist reports about the political economy aspects of America’s semi-nationalized mortgage industry.

Is the U.S. housing recovery still on firm footing? Your view on that will depend on which indicators you choose to believe. For the optimists: New home sales spiked 16.6 percent to 619,000 in April, the highest level recorded since early 2008, while the latest data from the Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price Index shows that prices are 5.4 percent higher in the country’s major cities than they were a year ago. And for the pessimists: April housing starts, though up 6.6 percent...

On VoxEU, Charles Calomiris and Matthew Jaremski discuss the origins of bank liability insurance. They argue that it is redistribution, not the aim to boost efficiency, which explains a lot of the action. … there are two theoretical approaches to explaining the creation and expansion of deposit insurance. The first is an economic approach grounded in potential efficiency gains from limiting bank runs (i.e. the public interest motivation). The second is a political approach grounded in the...