This paper analyzes the bubble in property values across cities in the U.S. from 1999 through 2005. We find evidence of momentum in house price growth (relative to growth in rents) away from the underlying “fundamentals” throughout the 1980-2005 period; however, momentum increased after 1999....

Technical progress in originating and pricing mortgages has enabled a trend since 1979 toward more relaxed credit standards on mortgage lending, which is reflected in rising foreclosure rates. We develop a methodology for decomposing the trend in mortgage performance in the national serviced...

It has been widely assumed that there was a bubble in the U.S. housing market after 1999. This paper analyzes the extent to which that was true. We define a bubble as: (1) a regime shift that is characterized by a change in the properties of deviations from the fundamentals of house price...

This paper analyzes the risk-taking behavior of financial intuitions that have guarantees (e.g., banks with deposit insurance or Government Sponsored Enterprises with implicit guarantees) and/or institutions that find it beneficial to develop a reputation for not taking risk. For instance, banks...