The arrival of immigrants increases demand for housing and puts upward pressure on shelter prices. Using instrumental variables based on the ancestry composition of residents in US counties, we estimate the causal impact of immigration on local shelter prices.
In many countries, the cost of housing has greatly outpaced income growth, leading to a housing affordability crisis. Leveraging Canadian loan-level data and quasi-experimental variation in payment-to-income constraints, we document an increasing reliance of first-time homebuyers on financial help from their parents, through mortgage co-signing. We show that parental support can effectively relax borrowing constraints—potentially to riskier borrowers.
We estimate a model of households in Norway with bequest motives, health-dependent utility, and uncertain longevity and health. Our estimates imply strong bequest motives for households both with and without offspring. We interpret this as suggestive evidence that utility from residual wealth represents forces beyond an altruistic bequest motive.
Governor Tiff Macklem speaks about the effectiveness—and limitations—of monetary policy. He highlights how raising and lowering the policy interest rate ultimately keeps inflation low, stable and predictable, despite significant shocks to the economy.
Governor Tiff Macklem discusses how monetary policy is working to bring inflation down—and how it has worked to return inflation to target over the last 25 years. He also talks about the limits of monetary policy, and why the right focus is on controlling inflation in the medium term.