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Why did so many people make so many ex post bad decisions?: the causes of the foreclosure crisis

Author Info

  • Christopher L. Foote
  • Kristopher S. Gerardi
  • Paul S. Willen

Abstract

This paper presents 12 facts about the mortgage market. The authors argue that the facts refute the popular story that the crisis resulted from financial industry insiders deceiving uninformed mortgage borrowers and investors. Instead, they argue that borrowers and investors made decisions that were rational and logical given their ex post overly optimistic beliefs about house prices. The authors then show that neither institutional features of the mortgage market nor financial innovations are any more likely to explain those distorted beliefs than they are to explain the Dutch tulip bubble 400 years ago. Economists should acknowledge the limits of our understanding of asset price bubbles and design policies accordingly.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in its series Public Policy Discussion Paper with number 12-2.

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Date of creation: 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbpp:12-2
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Keywords: Mortgage loans ; Global financial crisis ; Housing - Prices ; Foreclosure;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
  • D18 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Protection
  • D53 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Financial Markets
  • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
  • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
  • G02 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Behavioral Finance: Underlying Principles
  • G - Financial Economics

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
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  1. 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.
  2. Kristopher S. Gerardi & Harvey S. Rosen & Paul S. Willen, 2010. "The Impact of Deregulation and Financial Innovation on Consumers: The Case of the Mortgage Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 333-360, 02.
  3. Merton, Robert C, 1969. "Lifetime Portfolio Selection under Uncertainty: The Continuous-Time Case," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(3), pages 247-57, August.
  4. Andreas Fuster & David Laibson & Brock Mendel, 2010. "Natural Expectations and Macroeconomic Fluctuations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(4), pages 67-84, Fall.
  5. Pengfei Wang & Jianjun Miao, 2011. "Bubbles and Credit Constraints," 2011 Meeting Papers 94, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  6. Adelino, Manuel & Gerardi, Kristopher & Willen, Paul S., 2013. "Why don't Lenders renegotiate more home mortgages? Redefaults, self-cures and securitization," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 835-853.
  7. Elul, Ronel, 1997. "Financial innovation, precautionary saving and the risk-free rate," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 113-131, February.
  8. Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer, 2009. "What comes to mind," Economics Working Papers 1186, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Nov 2009.
  9. Edward L. Glaeser & Joshua D. Gottlieb & Joseph Gyourko, 2010. "Can Cheap Credit Explain the Housing Boom?," NBER Working Papers 16230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Kristopher S. Gerardi & Andreas Lehnert & Shane M. Sherlund & Paul S. Willen, 2009. "Making sense of the subprime crisis," Working Paper 2009-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
  11. Saul B. Klaman, 1959. "The Postwar Rise of Mortgage Companies," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number klam59-1, November.
  12. Ing-Haw Cheng & Sahil Raina & Wei Xiong, 2014. "Wall Street and the Housing Bubble," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2797-2829, September.
  13. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2009. "The Consequences of Mortgage Credit Expansion: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 124(4), pages 1449-1496, November.
  14. 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.
  15. Simsek, Alp, 2012. "Belief Disagreements and Collateral Constraints," Scholarly Articles 9561259, Harvard University Department of Economics.
  16. Kristopher S. Gerardi & Christopher L. Foote & Paul S. Willen, 2010. "Reasonable people did disagree : optimism and pessimism about the U.S. housing market before the crash," Public Policy Discussion Paper 10-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
  17. Gorton, Gary B., 2010. "Slapped by the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199734153.
  18. Rubén Hernández-Murillo & Andra C. Ghent & Michael T. Owyang, 2012. "Did affordable housing legislation contribute to the subprime securities boom?," Working Papers 2012-005, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
  19. Christopher L. Foote & Kristopher Gerardi & Paul S. Willen, 2008. "Negative equity and foreclosure: theory and evidence," Public Policy Discussion Paper 08-3, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
  20. Jane Dokko & Brian Doyle & Michael T. Kiley & Jinill Kim & Shane Sherlund & Jae Sim & Skander Van den Heuvel, 2009. "Monetary policy and the housing bubble," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2009-49, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  21. Akerlof, George A, 1970. "The Market for 'Lemons': Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500, August.
  22. Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2010. "Financial Innovation and Financial Fragility," NBER Chapters, in: Market Institutions and Financial Market Risk National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  23. John P. Herzog & James S. Earley, 1970. "Home Mortgage Delinquency and Foreclosure," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number herz70-1, November.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Foreclosure crisis: it is not about irrationality and sneaky bankers
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2012-05-29 14:48:00
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
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Cited by:

  1. di Iasio, Giovanni & Quagliariello, Mario, 2011. "Incentives through the cycle: microfounded macroprudential regulation," MPRA Paper 28179, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Steinar Holden, 2012. "Implications of insights from behavioral economics for macroeconomic models," IMK Working Paper 99-2012, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
  3. Anat Bracha & Elke U. Weber, 2012. "A psychological perspective of financial panic," Public Policy Discussion Paper 12-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
  4. Robert Shimer, 2013. "private information in the mortgage market: evidence and a theory of crises," Journal Economía Chilena (The Chilean Economy), Central Bank of Chile, vol. 16(2), pages 68-95, August.
  5. Andreas Fuster & Paul S. Willen, 2012. "Payment size, negative equity, and mortgage default," Staff Reports 582, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

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