RUI: Nineteenth Century Farm Mortgages: A Data Collection Project

储蓄和贷款行业最近的问题是 这让人想起了美国抵押贷款市场的另外四次危机， 1830年和1940年。 每次发作都伴随着严重的 宏观经济失调，并与 创新或修改现有的贷款安排。 这个项目旨在调查其中的一个事件， 19世纪的抵押贷款繁荣和19世纪90年代的萧条。 两 19世纪70年代引入了创新， 抵押资金从东北到农业边境： 西方抵押银行和东方人寿的抵押贷款 保险公司 通过这两个渠道的贷款量 二十年来迅速增长。 但几乎所有的西方国家 当西部的土地繁荣在1970年结束时， 19世纪90年代初，人寿保险的抵押贷款投资 各公司的表现继续令人满意。 这个目标 项目是为了解释为什么这两个性能 创新是如此不同。 这项研究很重要，因为 它将提供一个更好的理解，为什么机构 抵押贷款市场的创新是如此脆弱 在美国经济发展的历史上。 对十九大失败最有吸引力的解释 世纪抵押贷款银行强调信息不对称 是机构抵押贷款的固有特征 但这些 假设还有待检验，因为关于 个人抵押贷款合同不容易获得。 数据 基地将组装包含更多的详细信息 安泰人寿保险公司提供的七万多笔抵押贷款， 和一家堪萨斯抵押贷款银行（J. B。沃特金斯公司）在八 西部各州。 这是两个最重要的 在西部经营农业抵押贷款的机构贷款人 1870年至1900年的市场。 这些数据将用于检查 合同和贷款设计上的差异 实践解释了为什么沃特金斯公司等机构 失败了，而保险公司几乎没有问题， 抵押贷款组合 其他学者也会发现这一点 数据集有助于解决广泛的经济，社会， 与19世纪西部农场有关的政治问题 结算和抵押。

Recent problems with the savings and loan industry are reminiscent of four other American mortgage market crises between 1830 and 1940. Each episode was accompanied by severe macroeconomic dislocation, and was intimately connected to innovations or modifications of existing lending arrangements. This project is designed to investigate one of these episodes, the mortgage boom of the 1800s and the bust of the 1890s. Two innovations were introduced in the 1870s to stimulate the flow of mortgage funds from the Northeast to the agricultural frontier: western mortgage banks, and mortgage lending by eastern life insurance companies. The volume of lending through both channels increased rapidly for two decades. But nearly all of the western mortgage banks collapsed when the western land boom ended in the early 1890s, while the mortgage investments of the life insurance companies continued to perform satisfactorily. The goal of this project is to explain why the performance of these two innovations was so different. This research is important because it will provide a better understanding of why institutional innovations in the mortgage market have been so fragile throughout the history of American economic development. The most appealing explanations for the failure of nineteenth century mortgage banks emphasize that informational asymmetries are inherent in institutional mortgage lending. However, these hypotheses have yet to be tested because information on individual mortgage contracts is not easily attained. The data base to be assembled will contain detailed information on more than 70,000 mortgages made by the Aetna Life Insurance Company, and a Kansas mortgage bank (the J. B. Watkins Company) in eight western states. These were two of the most important institutional lenders operating in the western farm mortgage market between 1870 and 1900. These data will be used to examine whether differences in the design of contracts and lending practices explain why institutions such as the Watkins Company failed, while insurance companies were having little trouble with their mortgage portfolios. Other scholars will also find this data set useful for addressing a broad range of economic, social, and political issues connected to nineteenth-century western farm settlement and mortgage making.