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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 141 No. 3 2021

What drove the 2003–2006 house price boom and subsequent collapse? Disentangling competing explanations

John M. Griffin1; Samuel Kruger1; Gonzalo Maturana2

1 The University of Texas at Austin · 2 Emory University

open access

Abstract

Ten years after the financial crisis, the central question of what explains the rise and fall in house prices remains unresolved. We provide a unified framework to examine four excess credit supply variables and three speculation variables that have been proposed in the literature. Credit supply variables, particularly subprime share and worse originator share, strongly relate to future zip-code-level house price changes in the boom and bust, whereas none of the speculation variables consistently relate to house prices within MSAs. Pre-trends, supply elasticity, and depressed areas suggest these relations are not driven by lenders anticipating house price growth.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2020.06.014
Volume
141
Issue
3
Pages
1007-1035
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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