An examination of how and why individual financial institutions vary in their propensity to attract and approve mortgage applications from minorities, using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data.

A discussion of how mortgage lenders might use posted lending terms to signal both their eagerness to take new loan applications and their lending standards.

A lender-specific analysis of differences in minority and low-income mortgage loan originations using new applicant-level data gathered under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975.

A documentation of racial and neighborhood differences in home mortgage denial rates using data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, exploring the extent to which objective lending criteria are responsible for observed differences. The authors find persistent variations in denial...

An examination of how information about a neighborhood affects the level of lending activity in it--specifically, whether lenders deny mortgage applications at higher rates in neighborhoods where they have little experience in evaluating applications and/or where the lending community in general...

This study focuses on the relative importance of amenity and productivity differences in determining wage differentials across urban areas. The approach developed takes advantage of the connection between land and labor market clearing conditions required for locational equilibrium of households...

A demonstration that regional differences in the returns to human capital do not necessarily imply structural differences in regional labor markets, but could be reflecting compensation for regional differences in amenities.

An examination of the role of productivity differences in explaining the decline of manufacturing activity in large metropolitan areas relative to the rest of the country, with special attention given to the decline of the large metropolitan areas of the Manufacturing Belt.

A methodology is developed for constructing quality-of-life comparisons for metropolitan areas in which the full bundle of an area's attributes is valued, rather than the typical method of focusing on individual characteristics.

Loan commitments increase a bank's risk by obligating it to issue future loans under terms that it might otherwise refuse. However, moral hazard and adverse selection problems potentially may result in these contracts being rationed or sorted. Depending on the relative risks of the borrowers who...