Jonathan Heathcote

The price and quantity of residential land in the United States

A house is a bundle comprising a physical structure and the plot of land upon which the house is built. Thus changes in house prices reflect changes in the cost of structures and value of land. In this paper we apply this insight to construct the first constant-quality price and quantity indexes for the aggregate stock of residential land in the United States. We document that the value of residential land exceeds annual GDP, and that the dynamics for the prices of residential land and residential structures are quite different. For example, the real price index for residential land almost tripled between 1975 and 2005, while the real price of structures increased by only 24 percent. Fluctuations in house prices at business cycle frequencies, including the recent boom, are primarily driven by changes in the price of land.

The Macroeconomic Implications of Rising Wage Inequality in the United States

In recent decades, American workers have faced a rising college premium, a narrowing gender gap, and increasing wage volatility. This paper explores the quantitative and welfare implications of these changes. The framework is an incomplete-markets life cycle model in which individuals choose education, intrafamily time allocation, and savings. Given the observed history of the U.S. wage structure, the model replicates key trends in cross-sectional inequality in hours worked, earnings, and consumption. Recent cohorts enjoy welfare gains, on average, as higher relative wages for college graduates and for women translate into higher educational attainment and a more even division of labor within the household.

The International Diversification Puzzle is Not as Bad as You Think

The international diversification puzzle is the fact that country portfolios are on average biased toward domestic assets, while one-good international macro models with nondiversifiable labor income risk predict the opposite pattern of diversification. This paper embeds a portfolio choice decision in a two-good international business cycle model and provides a closed-form solution for equilibrium country portfolios. Equilibrium portfolios are biased toward domestic assets because endogenous international relative price fluctuations make domestic assets a good hedge against labor income risk. Evidence from developed economies in recent years is qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with the mechanisms highlighted by the theory.

Why Has the U.S. Economy Become Less Correlated with the Rest of the World

In this paper we do two things. First we document that over the last 40 years the U.S. business cycle has become less synchronized with the cycle in the rest of the world. Second we try to explain why this has happened. We use a general-equilibrium model as a tool to discriminate between two alternative explanations: (i) a change in the nature of real shocks, and (ii) an increase in U.S. financial integration with the rest of the world. Our results indicate that financial integration has played the major role in producing the observed changes in international co-movement.

Intergenerational Redistribution in the Great Recession

In this paper we construct a stochastic overlapping-generations general equilibrium model in which households are subject to aggregate shocks that affect both wages and asset prices. We use a calibrated version of the model to quantify how the welfare costs of severe recessions are distributed across different household age groups. The model predicts that younger cohorts fare better than older cohorts when the equilibrium decline in asset prices is large relative to the decline in wages, as observed in the data. Asset price declines hurt the old, who rely on asset sales to finance consumption, but benefit the young, who purchase assets at depressed prices. In our preferred calibration, asset prices decline more than twice as much as wages, consistent with the experience of the US economy in the Great Recession. A model recession is approximately welfare-neutral for households in the 20-29 age group, but translates into a large welfare loss of around 10% of lifetime consumption for households aged 70 and over.

From Wages to Welfare: Decomposing Gains and Losses from Rising Inequality *

This paper offers a critical evaluation of the large literature that studies the welfare consequences of the recent shift in the wage structure in the United States. Welfare calculations based on changes in the empirical distributions of consumption and hours worked – analyzed through the lens of a social welfare function– yield welfare losses on the order of two percent of lifetime consumption. However, two key components of the shift in the wage structure – the growth in the skill premium and the rise in wage volatility – can potentially generate welfare gains as individuals adjust their education and labor supply decisions. Quantifying the importance of these channels of adjustment requires a structural model. In our model-based calculations, under a plausible calibration, we find welfare gains exceeding one percent of lifetime consumption.

Assessing International Efficiency

This paper is structured in three parts. The first part outlines the methodological steps, involving both theoretical and empirical work, for assessing whether an observed allocation of resources across countries is efficient. The second part applies the methodology to the long-run allocation of capital and consumption in a large cross section of countries. We find that countries that grow faster in the long run also tend to save more both domestically and internationally. These facts suggest that either the long-run allocation of resources across countries is inefficient, or that there is a systematic relation between fast growth and preference for delayed consumption. The third part applies the methodology to the allocation of resources across developed countries at the business cycle frequency. Here we discuss how evidence on international quantity comovement, exchange rates, asset prices, and international portfolio holdings can be used to assess efficiency. Overall, quantities and portfolios appear consistent with efficiency, while evidence from prices is difficult to interpret using standard models. The welfare costs associated with an inefficient allocation of resources over the business cycle can be significant if shocks to relative country permanent income are large. In those cases partial financial liberalization can lower welfare.