The "annuity puzzle," conveying the apparently low interest of retirees in longevity insurance, is central to household finance. Two possible explanations are "public care aversion" (PCA), retiree aversion to simultaneously running out of wealth and being in need of long-term care, and an intentional bequest motive. To disentangle the relative importance of PCA and bequest motive, we estimate a structural model of the retirement phase using a novel survey instrument that includes hypothetical questions. We identify PCA as very significant and find bequest motives that spread deep into the middle class. Our results highlight potential interest in annuities that make allowance for long-term care expenses.

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Nonbanks originated about half of all mortgages in 2016, and 75 percent of the mortgages insured by the FHA and the VA. Both shares are much higher than those observed at any point in the 2000s. In this paper, we describe how nonbank mortgage companies are vulnerable to liquidity pressures in both their loan origination and servicing activities, and we document that this sector in the aggregate appears to have minimal resources to bring to bear in an adverse scenario. We show how the same liquidity issues unfolded during the financial crisis, leading to the failure of many nonbank companies, requests for government assistance, and harm to consumers. The high share of nonbank lenders in FHA and VA lending suggests that the government has significant exposure to the vulnerabilities of nonbank lenders, but this issue has received very little attention in the housing reform debate. M ost narratives of the housing and mortgage market crash in the late 2000s attribute it to house price declines, weak underwriting, and other factors that caused credit losses in the mortgage system. The Financial

Using a property-level data set of houses in Los Angeles County, I estimate that 30% of the recent surge in mortgage defaults is attributable to early home-buyers who would not have defaulted had they not borrowed against the rising value of their homes during the boom. I develop and estimate a structural model capable of explaining the patterns of both equity extraction and default observed among this group of homeowners. In the model, most of these defaults are attributable to the high loan-to-value ratios generated by this additional borrowing combined with the expectation that house prices would continue to decline. Only 30% are the result of income shocks and liquidity constraints. I use this model to analyze a policy that limits the maximum size of cash-out refinances to 80% of the current house value. I find that this restriction would reduce house prices by 14% and defaults by 28%. Despite the reduced borrowing opportunities, the welfare gain from this policy for new homeowners is equivalent to 3.2% of consumption because of their ability to purchase houses at lower prices.

Nonbanks originated about half of all mortgages in 2016, and 75% of mortgages insured by the FHA or VA. Both shares are much higher than those observed at any point in the 2000s. We describe in this paper how nonbank mortgage companies are vulnerable to liquidity pressures in both their loan origination and servicing activities, and we document that this sector in aggregate appears to have minimal resources to bring to bear in a stress scenario. We show how these exact same liquidity issues unfolded during the financial crisis, leading to the failure of many nonbank companies, requests for government assistance, and harm to consumers. The extremely high share of nonbank lenders in FHA and VA lending suggests that nonbank failures could be quite costly to the government, but this issue has received very little attention in the housing-reform debate.