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"The Home Owners' Loan Corporation purchased more than a million delinquent mortgages from private lenders between 1933 and 1936 and refinanced the loans for the borrowers. Its primary goal was to break the cycle of foreclosure, forced property sales and decreases in home values that was affecting local housing markets throughout the nation. We find that HOLC loans were targeted at local (county-level) housing markets that had experienced severe distress and that the intervention increased 1940 median home values and homeownership rates, but not new home building"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. This paper explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives, and body mass index (BMI). Using data from the 2006 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we first show that greater impatience increases BMI and the likelihood of obesity even after controlling for demographic, human capital, occupational, and financial characteristics as well as risk preference. Next, we provide evidence of an interaction effect between time preference and food prices, with cheaper food leading to the largest weight gains among those exhibiting the most impatience. The interaction of changing economic incentives with heterogeneous discounting may help explain why increases in BMI have been concentrated amongst the right tail of the distribution, where the health consequences are especially severe. Lastly, we model time-inconsistent preferences by computing individuals' quasi-hyperbolic discounting parameters (beta and delta). Both long-run patience (delta) and present-bias (beta) predict BMI, suggesting obesity is partly attributable to rational intertemporal tradeoffs but also partly to time inconsistency"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Between 1933 and 1936 the Home Owners' Loan Corporation purchased more than a million delinquent mortgages from private lenders and refinanced those loans for the borrowers. Its primary goal was to break the cycle of foreclosure, forced property sales and decreases in home values that was affecting local housing markets throughout the nation. We find that the volume of HOLC lending was related to measures of distress in local (county-level) housing markets and that these interventions increased 1940 median home values and homeownership rates, but not new home building."[A] tremendous surge of residential building in the [last] decade… was matched by an ever-increasing supply of homes sold on easy terms [and only]… a small decline in prices was necessary to wipe out this equity. Unfortunately, deflationary processes are never satisfied with small declines in values. They feed upon themselves and produce results out of all proportion to their causes… In the field of real estate finance, particularly, we have depended so much upon credit that our whole value structure can be thrown out of balance by relatively slight shocks. When such a delicate structure is once disorganized, it is a tremendous task to get it into a position where it can again function normally."1Henry Hoagland, 1935

This essay contributes to the debate about the alleged spillover effects associated with Wal‐Mart's growth. Combining county‐level data on Wal‐Mart entry and location from 1985 through 1998 with individual‐level data on leisure activities, we estimate a positive relationship between Wal‐Mart penetration and participation in activities involving inputs that can be bought at Wal‐Mart. The relationship between Wal‐Mart penetration and activities that do not involve inputs that can be bought at Wal‐Mart is negative in most cases but may be positive or zero for "cultural" activities such as attending classical music concerts and visiting art galleries. The evidence is consistent with the thesis that deeper Wal‐Mart penetration expands consumption possibilities.(JELA13, D00, C12, Z11, Z13)