The great housing convulsion that buffeted America between 2000 and 2010 has historical precedents, from the frontier land boom of the 1790s to the skyscraper craze of the 1920s. But [...]
The increase in defaults in the subprime mortgage market is widely held to be one of the causes behind the recent financial turmoil. Key issues of policy concern include quantifying [...]
The recent banking crisis highlights the challenges faced in credit intermediation. New online peer-to-peer lending markets offer opportunities to examine lending models that primarily cater to small borrowers and that [...]
We present evidence that high concentration in local mortgage lending reduces the sensitivity of mortgage rates and refinancing activity to mortgage-backed security (MBS) yields. A decrease in MBS yields is [...]
The boom and subsequent bust of housing construction and prices over the 2000s is widely regarded as a principal contributor to the financial panic of 2007 and the ensuing “Great [...]
Over the boom period, however, the traditional methods of mortgage finance were undergoing a series of dramatic changes. While mortgages had been fixed- or adjustable- rate in the past, nontraditional [...]
This paper analyzes options for reforming the U.S. housing finance system in view of the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). The options considered [...]
The financial crisis showed, once again, that neglecting real estate booms can have disastrous consequences. In this paper, we spell out the circumstances under which a more active policy agenda [...]
We examine how special interests, measured by campaign contributions from the mortgage industry, and constituent interests, measured by the share of subprime borrowers in a congressional district, may have influenced [...]
Using data on household portfolios and mortgage originations, we find that households residing in a city with few publicly traded firms headquartered there are more likely to own an investment [...]