Christopher J. Mayer’s research while affiliated with Columbia University and other places

This paper examines the effects of intergenerational transfers on saving behavior by examining private wealth transfers targeted toward first-time home purchases. The study of transfer behavior in the housing market is advantageous for a number of reasons: the down payment requirement associated with home purchase can be thought of as an important, well-defined borrowing constraint that most U.S. households face; private wealth transfers targeted to home purchases are significant; and home equity is a highly important component of household wealth in the United States. The empirical analysis shows that transfer recipients have a saving rate that is lower than that of non-recipients by as much as 6 percentage points, representing a reduction of 39 to 49 percent in the household saving rate. In addition, households that receive transfers reduce the time required to save for the down payment by 22 percent. For each dollar of transfer received, households increase the dollar amount of the down payment by about 85 cents, allowing them to achieve a higher down payment threshold. Households also increase the value of the home purchased upon receiving a transfer, but by an amount that is much lower than would be possible if the transfer were fully leveraged. The amount of the transfer appears to be targeted to help households achieve certain down payment thresholds that give favorable terms on mortgages. Although the evidence suggests that the availability of a transfer reduces household savings, we cannot reject the alternative hypothesis that transfer recipients are inherently low savers.

This article investigates the performance of real estate auctions relative to negotiated sales. It uses a repeat-sales methodology to control for unobserved differences in the quality of auction properties. Properties auctioned in Los Angeles during the 1980s boom sold at an estimated discount of 0%-9%, while sales in Dallas following the oil bust obtained discounts of 9%-21%. This evidence is consistent with the theoretical prediction that the auction discount increases in downturns when a seller trades-off a longer expected selling time in a search market against an immediate auction sale. The study finds no evidence of the declining price anomaly. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

This paper investigates the relationship between short-term interest rates and bank risk. Using a unique database that includes quarterly balance sheet information for listed banks operating in the European Union and the United States in the last decade, we find evidence that unusually low interest rates over an extended period of time contributed to an increase in banks' risk. This result holds for a wide range of measures of risk, as well as macroeconomic and institutional controls.