Leading economists and other housing market researchers examine key elements of the mortgage meltdown in this volume of original essays. More than a critique in hindsight, this volume offers pragmatic solutions to the problems facing American home ownership.

Biographical note: Susan M. Wachter is Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management and Professor of Real Estate and Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Professor of City and Regional Planning at PennDesign. She codirects the Penn Institute for Urban...

In the fall of 2008, the world watched in horror as the U.S. housing finance system shattered, triggering a global financial panic and ultimately the Great Recession. Now, nearly a decade later, the long and slow housing recovery has reached a critical moment. Though the housing finance system...

In this paper we identify the relationship of the pricing of residential mortgage lending products to their market share during the run up to the financial crisis of 2007. We then use this relationship to decompose the total impact of nontraditional mortgage products on house price declines...

Introduction: In praise of homeownership -- Housing finance before the New Deal -- The New Deal mortgage -- The rise of securitization -- The boom and the bubble -- The bubble bursts -- Timing the bubble -- Demand or supply? -- Theories of the bubble -- The securitization daisy chain --...