Conventional wisdom held that housing prices couldn’t fall. But the spectacular boom and bust of the housing market during the first decade of the twenty-first century and millions of foreclosed homeowners have made it clear that housing is no different from any other asset in its ability to...

Contents; Preface; Postmortem for a Housing Crash / Edward L. Glaeser and Todd Sinai; 1. House Price Moments in Boom-Bust Cycles / Todd Sinai; 2. The Supply Side of the Housing Boom and Bust of the 2000s / Andrew Haughwout, Richard W. Peach, John Sporn, and Joseph Tracy; 3. A Spatial Look at Housing...

Conventional wisdom held that housing prices couldn't fall. But the spectacular boom and bust of the housing market during the first decade of the twenty-first century and millions of foreclosed homeowners have made it clear that housing is no different from any other asset in its ability to...

The paper uses Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis as an analytical framework for understanding the subprime mortgage crisis and for introducing adequate reforms to restore economic stability. We argue that the subprime crisis has structural origins that extend far beyond the housing and...

A bursting asset bubble inevitably requires central bank action, usually when it is already too late and with adverse spillover effects. In this sense, the Federal Reserve and other central banks already target asset prices; yet, by taking aim at them only on the way down - as in the current...