This paper examines the contributions of population aging, mortgage innovation and historically low interest rates to the sharp rise in U.S. house prices and mortgage debt between 1994 and 2005.
Using BoC-GEM-Fin, a large-scale DSGE model with real, nominal and financial frictions featuring a banking sector, we explore the macroeconomic implications of various types of countercyclical bank capital regulations. Results suggest that countercyclical capital requirements have a significant stabilizing effect on key macroeconomic variables, but mostly after financial shocks.