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...

In order to deal with the rampant increase in housing prices, the Government of the People's Republic of China implemented the home purchase restriction (HPR) policy to curb speculation and prevent housing bubbles. This policy triggered an exogenous demand shock to the housing market. Employing...

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...