A recent topic of debate in the U.S. budget community centers on how the federal government should estimate the cost of providing loans to various borrowers such as students and homebuyers. Currently costs are assessed assuming that the government’s cost of capital is equal to the Treasury rate. Pro...

It is with great pleasure that I transition to my new role as the inaugural executive director of MIT’s Center for Finance and Policy (CFP). As someone who has focused on government financial institutions for many years, I welcome this new beginning as a chance to direct sunlight towards a unique se...

It is the rare journalist who tackles the topic of government credit programs and their ills. Rarer still is a popular account that accurately brings these complicated issues to life. Kudos to Michael Grunwald, who writing for Politico, did just that. I highly recommend his article. (Note that to ge...

by Khalid Alsweilem, Mark Kritzman, and Malan Rietveld | Sovereign Wealth Funds

by Ed Golding, Michelle Aronowitz and Jung Choi // This paper demonstrates that Black homeowners on average will pay $67,320 more for their houses because...

In a new paper, How Much Can Collective Defined Contribution Plans Improve Risk-Sharing?, GCFP Director [...]

The purpose of this note is to suggest answers to several fundamental questions about value of the federal government’s support for the GSEs.

Financial regulation is most effective when it targets the origins of the problem it seeks to remedy. This is akin to the medical adage: treat the cause, not the symptom. Identifying the causal factors driving distress in financial markets is no easy task. One complication is that the cause might li...

When deposits are not completely insured, the presence of too big-to-fail (TBTF) banks alters the competitive landscape for depositors’ funds [...]