By the end of 2007, thirty states and the District of Colombia had passed some sort of mortgage regulation statute, while the remaining states left the mortgage market unregulated. Were these state mortgage laws effective in restraining risky mortgage lending and mitigating the surge in...

In this article, I survey the state of the mortgage loan transfer system, the legal rules that govern it, and the widening gap between those rules and the practices in the secondary mortgage market just prior to the 2008 crisis. The review includes some empirical assessment of the extent of...

The law of contracts and consumer protection has been dominated in the recent past by the ideology of rational choice theory. As a descriptive project, rational choice theory holds that consumers express their preferences and maximize their expected utility by making choices in the marketplace....

While the subprime mortgage boom was in full swing, its benefits to American society were widely touted. Subprime mortgages were said to have increased homeownership. The subprime effect was supposed to have been especially strong for low-income and minority families previously unable to buy...

The law of contracts and consumer protection has been dominated in the recent past by the ideology of rational choice theory. As a descriptive project, rational choice theory holds that consumers express their preferences and maximize their expected utility by making choices in the marketplace....

In the first two years of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program almost 100,000 student loan borrowers have applied, and the Department of Education's contractor has denied roughly 99,000 of those applications. The administration blames Congress for an unduly complex program design,...

Do homeowner bankruptcy filings work to delay or prevent home foreclosures, and how do they compare to voluntary loan modifications specifically targeted to mortgage relief? The 2007–2012 financial crisis provides a unique opportunity to assess whether bankruptcy can help homeowners avoid the...