House prices in many industrial countries increased dramatically in the years prior to 2007. Countries with the largest increases in household debt relative to income experienced the fastest run-ups in house prices over the same period. During the run-up, many economists and policymakers...

We use a simple quantitative asset pricing model to "reverse-engineer" the sequences of stochastic shocks to housing demand and lending standards that are needed to exactly replicate the boom-bust patterns in U.S. household real estate value and mortgage debt over the period 1995 to 2012....