Collaborative Proposal: Government, Housing, and the Changing Income Distribution during the Great Depression: A Disaggregated and Microeconomic Approach

合作提案：大萧条期间的政府、住房和不断变化的收入分配：一种分类的微观经济方法

• 批准号: 0617942
• 负责人: Shawn Kantor
• 金额: $ 12.9万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-08-01 至 2010-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0617942&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Proposal; Government; Housing; Changing

This project performs microeconomic studies of housing markets, housing finance institutions, and changes in the income distribution during the Great Depression using panels of city and neighborhood level data to analyze how these markets were influenced by various factors, including federal, state, and local government policies. Current worries about a possible bursting of a housing bubble pale in comparison to the Great Depression. After a housing boom in the late 1920s, housing markets and construction ground to a halt in some markets and housing values plummeted. Only a handful of modern economists and economic historians and several NBER economists in the 1950s have published studies on the microeconomics of housing during the 1930s. Housing is particularly important because it accounts for a large percentage of household assets and mortgage loans are typically the major form of debt owed by households. The New Deal administrators saw housing as a major concern and established several programs to resolve housing problems, including the Home Owners' Loan Corporation's (HOLC), which refinanced 20 percent of all mortgages in 1933-1934 and the Federal Housing Administration, which began providing insurance of mortgages and loans for repair and reconstruction. This project analyzes housing markets during the Great Depression using a series of panel data sets that we will construct from original sources and government documents. It analyzes annual building permit activity for over 200 cities in the 1920s and 1930s. For all U.S. counties, it examines changes in the distribution of home ownership, housing values, and rents for 7 to 11 value ranges between the census years 1930 and 1940 for all counties in the U.S. After matching information from detailed property inventories from the mid-1930s for over major 200 cities and towns with the 1930 and 1940 information, the project examines the decline in home ownership rates, average housing values and rents from the late 1920s into the mid-1930s and the recovery in these values in 1939 for up to 200 cities in the United States. Based on formerly confidential HOLC housing studies, the project examines the bust and recovery in housing values for different qualities of housing for thousands of neighborhoods across 200 cities with emphasis on the impact of neighborhood amenities and disamenities, income levels, and racial and ethnic differences across the neighborhoods.The investigators trace how variations in the 1929-1933 decline across cities influenced the incomes of specific groups of households in 1929, 1932, and 1933 in different parts of the income distribution using retrospective information from housing finance surveys in at least 22 cities. The investigators also examine for a larger number of cities how shares of households in different income ranges changed between 1933 and 1940. Using HOLC surveys of all the mortgage lenders in roughly 200 cities, they analyze the dramatic cross-sectional differences in the types of institutions offering mortgages in different parts of the county and the changes in the institutions roles and the types of mortgages contracts that they agreed to during the 1930s. Throughout this project examines the interactions between Federal government programs and state and local taxing and spending programs on these housing markets and on the income distributions.Broader Impact: The project broadens our understanding of the factors that influence housing markets, particularly in Depressions. The datasets created and the .pdf file copies of the records that are posted provide a large public good to other researchers interested in these and other topics related to the 1930s and in discerning long run trends in during the 20th century.

该项目利用城市和社区层面的数据面板，对住房市场、住房金融机构以及大萧条期间收入分配的变化进行微观经济研究，以分析这些市场如何受到各种因素（包括联邦、州和地方政府政策）的影响。 与大萧条时期相比，当前对房地产泡沫可能破裂的担忧显得苍白无力。 20 年代末房地产繁荣之后，一些市场的房地产市场和建筑业陷入停滞，房价暴跌。只有少数现代经济学家和经济史学家以及 20 世纪 50 年代的几位 NBER 经济学家发表了 1930 年代住房微观经济学的研究报告。 住房尤为重要，因为它占家庭资产的很大一部分，而抵押贷款通常是家庭所欠债务的主要形式。新政管理者将住房视为一个主要问题，并制定了多项计划来解决住房问题，其中包括业主贷款公司（HOLC）和联邦住房管理局，前者在 1933 年至 1934 年间为所有抵押贷款的 20% 提供了再融资，后者开始提供抵押贷款保险以及维修和重建贷款。 该项目使用一系列面板数据集来分析大萧条期间的房地产市场，我们将根据原始资料和政府文件构建这些数据集。它分析了 200 年代和 1930 年代 200 多个城市的年度建筑许可活动。对于美国所有县，它研究了 1930 年至 1940 年人口普查期间美国所有县的房屋所有权、住房价值和租金分布的变化，该值范围为 7 至 11 个。在将 1930 年代中期 200 多个主要城镇的详细财产清单信息与 1930 年和 1940 年信息进行匹配后，该项目研究了房屋拥有率的下降情况，从20世纪20年代末到20世纪20年代的平均住房价值和租金 20 世纪 30 年代中期以及 1939 年美国多达 200 个城市的这些值的恢复。该项目以以前保密的 HOLC 住房研究为基础，研究了 200 个城市的数千个社区不同质量住房的住房价值的暴跌和复苏，重点关注社区便利设施和缺陷、收入水平以及社区之间的种族和民族差异的影响。调查人员追踪了 1929 年至 1933 年各城市房价下降的变化如何影响 1929 年、1932 年和 1929 年和 1932 年特定家庭群体的收入。 1933 年，利用至少 22 个城市的住房金融调查的回顾性信息，对收入分配的不同部分进行了研究。 调查人员还对更多城市进行了调查，了解 1933 年至 1940 年间不同收入范围的家庭比例如何变化。通过对大约 200 个城市的所有抵押贷款机构进行 HOLC 调查，他们分析了该县不同地区提供抵押贷款的机构类型的巨大横截面差异，以及 1930 年代机构角色及其同意的抵押贷款合同类型的变化。在整个项目中，研究了联邦政府计划与州和地方税收和支出计划之间对这些住房市场和收入分配的相互作用。更广泛的影响：该项目拓宽了我们对影响住房市场的因素的理解，特别是在萧条时期。创建的数据集和发布的记录的 .pdf 文件副本为对这些以及与 20 世纪 30 年代相关的其他主题以及辨别 20 世纪长期趋势感兴趣的其他研究人员提供了巨大的公共利益。