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This paper documents a number of key facts about the evolution of mortgage debt, homeownership, debt burden, and subsequent delinquency during the recent housing boom and Great Recession. We show that the mortgage expansion was shared across the entire income distribution; that is, the flow and stock of debt rose across all income groups (except for the top 5%). The mortgage expansion was especially pronounced in areas with increased house prices, and the speed at which houses turned over (churn) in these areas went up significantly. However, the average loan-to-value ratios (LTV) at origination did not increase over the boom period. While homeownership rates increased for the middle- and upper-income households, there was no increase in homeownership for the lowest income groups. Finally, default rates postcrisis went up predominantly in areas with large house price drops, especially for high-income and high-FICO borrowers. These results are consistent with a view that the run-up in mortgage debt over the precrisis period was driven by rising home values and expectations of increasing prices.

Ten years after the financial crisis of 2008, there is widespread agreement that the boom in mortgage lending and its subsequent reversal were at the core of the Great Recession. We survey the existing evidence, which suggests that inflated house-price expectations across the economy played a central role in driving both the demand for and the supply of mortgage credit before the crisis. The great misnomer of the 2008 crisis is that it was not a subprime crisis but rather a middle-class crisis. Inflated house-price expectations led households across all income groups, especially the middle class, to increase their demand for housing and mortgage leverage. Similarly, banks lent against increasing collateral values and underestimated the risk of defaults. We highlight how these emerging facts have essential implications for policy.

This paper highlights the importance of middle-class and high-FICO borrowers for the mortgage crisis. Contrary to popular belief, which focuses on subprime and poor borrowers, we show that mortgage originations increased for borrowers across all income levels and FICO scores. The relation between mortgage growth and income growth at the individual level remained positive throughout the pre-2007 period. Finally, middle-income, highincome, and prime borrowers all sharply increased their share of delinquencies in the crisis. These results are consistent with a demand-side view, where homebuyers and lenders bought into increasing house values and borrowers defaulted after prices dropped.

New firms are an important source of job creation, but the underlying economic mechanisms for why this is so are not well understood. Using an identification strategy that links shocks to local income to job creation in the nontradable sector, we ask whether job creation arises more through new firm creation or through the expansion of existing firms. We find that new firms account for the bulk of net employment creation in response to local investment opportunities. We also find significant gross job creation and destruction by existing firms, suggesting that positive local shocks accelerate churn.

We show that municipalities' financial constraints can have a significant impact on local employment and growth. We identify these effects by exploiting exogenous upgrades in U.S. municipal bond ratings caused by Moody's recalibration of its ratings scale in 2010. We find that local governments increase expenditures because their debt capacity expands following a rating upgrade. These expenditures have an estimated local income multiplier of 1.9 and a cost per job of $20,000 per year. Our findings suggest that debt-financed increases in government spending can improve economic conditions during recessions.

We study the causal effect of bank credit rating downgrades on the supply of bank lending. The identification strategy exploits the asymmetric impact of sovereign downgrades on the ratings of banks at the sovereign bound relative to banks that are not at the bound as a result of rating agencies' sovereign ceiling policies. This asymmetric effect leads to greater reductions in ratings-sensitive funding and lending of banks at the bound relative to other banks. Results for foreign borrowers and within lender-borrower relationships confirm that credit demand does not explain our findings.

This paper examines investment choices of nonprofit hospitals. It tests how shocks to cash flows caused by the performance of the hospitals' financial assets affect hospital expenditures. Capital expenditures increase, on average, by 10 to 28 cents for every dollar received from financial assets. The sensitivity is similar to that found earlier for shareholder-owned corporations. Executive compensation, other salaries, and perks do not respond significantly to cash flow shocks. Hospitals with an apparent tendency to overspend on medical procedures do not exhibit higher investment-cash flow sensitivities. The sensitivities are higher for hospitals that appear financially constrained.

This paper develops and estimates an instrumental variables strategy for identifying the causal effect of securitization on the incidence of mortgage modification and foreclosure based on the early payment default analysis performed by Piskorsi et al. (J Financ Econ 97:360–397, 2010 ). Estimation results show that securitized mortgages are more likely to be modified and less likely to be foreclosed on by servicers. These results are consistent with the interpretation in Adelino et al. ( 2009 ) that low modification rates are not the result of contract frictions inherent in the mortgage securitization process.

Atualmente, o cancro é uma das doenças mais incidentes e impactantes a nível mundial, afetando mais de vinte milhões de pessoas. É estimado que em 2040 haja um aumento de quase cinquenta por cento na incidência do cancro, passando a afetar cerca de trinta milhões de pessoas em todo o mundo. Um dos cancros com maior expressão a nível mundial é o cancro colorretal (CCR), que sendo o terceiro tipo de cancro mais comum, é o segundo mais mortífero. Assim, dada a sua elevada incidência e uma vez que o cancro pode ser muito heterogéneo, a descoberta de moléculas promissoras para o seu tratamento não é uma tarefa fácil, mas muito relevante.O grupo de investigação onde foi desenvolvido o presente projeto de mestrado, em colaboração com o grupo da Prof. Filomena Botelho (Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Coimbra) e posteriormente com o grupo do Prof. Lucília Saraiva (Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade do Porto), foi responsável pela identificação de um composto líder da família dos pirrolotiazóis quirais com atividade antitumoral. Inicialmente este composto foi estudado em linhas celulares humanas do cancro da mama, mas, rapidamente, avanços na compreensão do seu mecanismo de ação levaram a um redireccionamento para o estudo da sua utilização no CCR. O principal objetivo do projeto científico que deu origem a esta dissertação era a modulação estrutural do composto líder, MANIO, de forma a melhorar as suas propriedades farmacodinâmicas e farmacocinéticas, e a identificação de relações estrutura-atividade da família de pirrolotiazóis quirais.Na introdução desta dissertação é feita uma breve revisão do estado da arte sobre o CCR e o seu tratamento atual. Neste contexto, é apresentada a atividade antitumoral do MANIO e de alguns dos seus derivados anteriormente sintetizados em linhas celulares do cancro colorretal que expressam a proteína p53 (HCT116 p53+/+) e que não expressam a proteína p53 (HCT116 p53-/-), de forma a avaliar o potencial uso de compostos da família dos pirrolotiazóis quirais no tratamento do CCR como ativadores da proteína p53.No capítulo seguinte são contempladas as metodologias sintéticas, e respetivos processos de otimização, utilizadas para a obtenção de novos derivados de 1H,3H-pirrolo-[1,2-c]tiazóis quirais. O trabalho desenvolvido neste projeto de investigação permitiu a síntese de dois novos derivados mono-hidroximetilo com configuração absoluta S, 6- e 7-hidroximetil-3-fenil-5-metil-1H,3H-pirrolo[1,2-c] tiazol e de um conjugado do enantiómero do MANIO com o ácido linoleico. Adicionalmente, foi possível sintetizar derivados de 1H,3H-pirrolo[1,2-c]tiazóis contendo ácidos carboxílicos, amidas primárias ou N-benzilamidas em C-6 e/ou C-7. Por fim, foi ainda demonstrado que apesar das dificuldades encontradas na redução de derivados bis(amida), era possível reduzir eficientemente os derivados contendo apenas um grupo funcional amida, o que culminou na síntese de um derivado mono-aminometilo protegido com o grupo benzilo, (3R)-6-(N-benzil-aminometil)-3-fenil-5-metil-1H,3H-pirrolo[1,2-c]tiazol.No terceiro capítulo é apresentado o estudo da atividade antitumoral (na linha celular HCT116) de sete novos derivados sintetizados ao longo deste projeto. Os resultados obtidos permitem a identificação de um derivado com elevada atividade, o (3S)-7-hidroximetil-3-fenil-5-metil-1H,3H-pirrolo[1,2-c]tiazol. Adicionalmente, é também demonstrada a importância do(s) grupo(s) hidroximetilo(s) em C-6/C-7 para garantir uma elevada atividade antitumoral e concluir que estes grupos possuem um elevado grau de sinergismo com a configuração absoluta em C-3.