The U.S. government guarantees a majority of residential mortgages, which is often justified as a means to promote homeownership. In this paper we use property-level data to estimate the effect of government mortgage guarantees on homeownership, by exploiting variation of the conforming loan...

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Coryright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- Acknowledgments -- List of Acronyms -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The Visible Hand of Government in U.S. Credit Markets -- 3. Discrimination, Redlining, and Financial Restructuring in Business...