Much regulatory effort has been devoted to improving mortgage lending, the principal source of housing finance. To date, that effort has primarily been microprudential — intended to correct market failures in order to increase economic efficiency. In contrast, and while there is some overlap,...

We analyze how two types of recently used prudential policies affected the supply of credit in the United States. First, we test whether the U.S. bank stress tests had any impact on the supply of mortgage credit. We find that the first Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) stress test...