IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/poleco/v25y2009i1p124-132.html

The political economy of the subprime crisis: Why subprime was so attractive to its creators

Author

Listed:
  • Swan, Peter L.

Abstract

Examination of the origins of the 2008 subprime crisis reveals that what occurred was no accident. All the major parties responsible for the crisis appear to have gained something from what transpired, at least in the short-run. Moreover, it seems to have been as much, if not more, a failure of government and its agencies inclusive of regulators as much as any failure of capitalism. Finally, the apparently arbitrary, if not self-interested, bank bailouts seem to indicate that governments are likely to directing bank policy for some time.

Suggested Citation

  • Swan, Peter L., 2009. "The political economy of the subprime crisis: Why subprime was so attractive to its creators," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 124-132, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:25:y:2009:i:1:p:124-132
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176-2680(09)00005-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Foote, Christopher L. & Gerardi, Kristopher & Goette, Lorenz & Willen, Paul S., 2008. "Just the facts: An initial analysis of subprime's role in the housing crisis," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 291-305, December.
    2. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi & Francesco Trebbi, 2010. "The Political Economy of the US Mortgage Default Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 1967-1998, December.
    3. Yuliya Demyanyk & Otto Van Hemert, 2011. "Understanding the Subprime Mortgage Crisis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 1848-1880.
    4. Danis, Michelle A. & Pennington-Cross, Anthony, 2008. "The delinquency of subprime mortgages," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 60(1-2), pages 67-90.
    5. Ashcraft, Adam B. & Schuermann, Til, 2008. "Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 191-309, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrea Vaona, 2015. "Inflation gifts restrictions for structural VARs: evidence from the US," Working Papers 16/2015, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    2. Shanuka Senarath & Pelma Rajapakse & Jan Job de Vries Robbé & Naveen Wickremeratne & Maduka Subasinghage, 2022. "Being Naked - et Quo hinc ?: Developing a ‘Skin-in-the-Game’ Solution for Credit Default Swaps," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-14, October.
    3. Fricke, Daniel, 2010. "Contagion between European and US banks: Evidence from equity prices," Kiel Working Papers 1667, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
    4. Robert E. Prasch, 2010. "Bankers Gone Wild: The Crash of 2008," Chapters, in: Steven Kates (ed.), Macroeconomic Theory and its Failings, chapter 11, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Katsimi, Margarita & Moutos, Thomas, 2010. "EMU and the Greek crisis: The political-economy perspective," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 568-576, December.
    6. Woon Sau Leung & Nicholas Taylor, 2013. "Testing for contagion: the impact of US structured markets on international financial markets," Chapters, in: Adrian R. Bell & Chris Brooks & Marcel Prokopczuk (ed.), Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Empirical Finance, chapter 11, pages 256-284, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ingo Fender & Martin Scheicher, 2009. "The pricing of subprime mortgage risk in good times and bad: evidence from the ABX.HE indices," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(24), pages 1925-1945.
    2. W. Scott Frame & Lawrence J. White, 2009. "Technological Change, Financial Innovation, and Diffusion in Banking," Working Papers 09-03, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    3. Pagès, Henri, 2013. "Bank monitoring incentives and optimal ABS," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 30-54.
    4. Shi, Lan & Zhang, Yan, 2015. "Appraisal inflation: Evidence from the 2009 GSE HVCC intervention," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 71-90.
    5. Olivier Mesly & David W. Shanafelt & Nicolas Huck, 2021. "Dysfunctional Markets: A Spray of Prey Perspective," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(3), pages 797-819, July.
    6. Christopher Foote & Kristopher Gerardi & Lorenz Goette & Paul Willen, 2010. "Reducing Foreclosures: No Easy Answers," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 89-138, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Seda Durguner, 2021. "Relaxed Credit Standards in the U.S. Housing Boom: Changes in Risk Characteristics of Mortgage Recipients," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 208-254, March.
    8. Christopher L. Foote & Kristopher Gerardi & Paul S. Willen, 2012. "Why did so many people make so many ex post bad decisions? the causes of the foreclosure crisis," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2012-07, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    9. Pu Liu & Yingying Shao, 2013. "Small business loan securitization and interstate risk sharing," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 449-460, August.
    10. Andreas Fuster & David Lucca & James Vickery, 2023. "Mortgage-backed securities," Chapters, in: Refet S. Gürkaynak & Jonathan H. Wright (ed.), Research Handbook of Financial Markets, chapter 15, pages 331-357, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Yilmazer, Tansel & Babiarz, Patryk & Liu, Fen, 2015. "The impact of diminished housing wealth on health in the United States: Evidence from the Great Recession," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 234-241.
    12. Jenny Gu & Rodrigo J. Hernandez & Pu Liu & Yingying Shao, 2017. "Mortgage loan securitization and personal consumption smoothening," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 41(1), pages 100-115, January.
    13. Nadauld, Taylor D. & Sherlund, Shane M., 2009. "The Role of the Securitization Process in the Expansion of Subprime Credit," Working Paper Series 2009-9, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    14. Sumit Agarwal & Brent W. Ambrose & Yildiray Yildirim, 2015. "The Subprime Virus," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(4), pages 891-915, November.
    15. Andrew Haughwout & Ebiere Okah & Joseph Tracy, 2016. "Second Chances: Subprime Mortgage Modification and Redefault," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(4), pages 771-793, June.
    16. Matthew J. Botsch, 2022. "Correction to: Public and Private Benefits of Information in Markets for Securitized Assets," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 366-366, June.
    17. Gabriel, Stuart A. & Kahn, Matthew E. & Vaughn, Ryan K., 2015. "Congressional influence as a determinant of subprime lending," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 91-102.
    18. Janet Currie & Erdal Tekin, 2015. "Is There a Link between Foreclosure and Health?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 63-94, February.
    19. Turnbull, Geoffrey K. & van der Vlist, Arno J., 2022. "The price of ignorance: Foreclosures, uninformed buyers and house prices," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    20. Rajdeep Sengupta & Geetesh Bhardwaj, 2015. "Credit Scoring and Loan Default," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 15(2), pages 139-167, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:25:y:2009:i:1:p:124-132. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505544 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.