Three Essays on Households' Finances and Their Macroeconomic Relevance

Abstract

How do households make their financial decisions, and how does this affect macroeconomic outcomes such as homeownership and borrowing rates, labor supply and socioeconomic inequality? This thesis contributes to the economic literature related to these questions by studying high-quality long-run microdata and combining them with economic theory. The first chapter studies the effects of relaxing income-based mortgage borrowing constraints on housing and labor market decisions of married couples. The second chapter sheds light on the evolution of U.S. household debt since the 1950s and its drivers, with a special focus on the role of housing debt and home equity extraction. The third chapter provides long-run evidence on the college wealth premium, and its relation to households' portfolio choices.