Collaborative Research: Institutional Performance and Change during Boom and Bust: The Residential Mortgage Market, 1920-1940

合作研究：繁荣与萧条期间的机构绩效和变化：住宅抵押贷款市场，1920-1940 年

• 批准号: 1061927
• 负责人: Kenneth Snowden
• 金额: $ 25.7万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina Greensboro
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-05-15 至 2015-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1061927&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Institutional; Performance; Change

PROJECT ABSTRACTInstitutional Performance and Change during Boom and Bust: The Residential Mortgage Market, 1920-1940The residential mortgage crisis that began in 2007 is more severe, in terms of rates of foreclosure and decreases in home prices and residential wealth, than any since the 1930s. The building and mortgage boom of the 1920s and bust of the 1930s, as a result, provide striking historical benchmarks against which to measure our own experience. History can play a much more important role, however, because it offers the opportunity to investigate three issues that are of great importance and relevance as we struggle through our own mortgage crisis: 1. We need to examine why the collapse in residential housing markets during the 1930s was so severe, and the recovery from it so uneven, in order to better understand how disruptions to the mortgage market contributed to the depth and duration of the Great Depression. These issues are relevant today because the volume of mortgage lending grew rapidly during the 1920s just as it did before the current crisis; because rapid innovation transformed mortgage loan contracts and funding channels in the lead-up to both episodes; and because both crises were marked by widespread disruption in mortgage lending channels. 2. We need to assess whether federal emergency responses were effective in ameliorating the impacts of the 1930s mortgage crisis. These New Deal interventions were extraordinary in size and scope, but similar to recent policies in that they encouraged widespread mortgage loan modification. Examining the emergency policies of the 1930s, as a result, can help us better understand how responses during the current crisis have succeeded and fallen short.3. We need to examine the performance of the mortgage market before, during and after the institutional structure of the nation?s mortgage market was permanently reshaped between 1932 and 1938 by the creation of the Federal Home Loan Bank System, the modern Saving & Loans industry, the FHA home mortgage loan insurance program, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the introduction of the long-term, amortized, low-down payment mortgage loan. These institutions continue to form the basic framework of the modern mortgage market and understanding their origins will provide important guidance as we reshape them once again.All three issues deserve close investigation, but discussion of financial crises during the Great Depression has for decades been focused almost exclusively on the banking system and the stock market. This project is designed to rectify that oversight by stimulating for the first time a serious examination of the issues enumerated above. It does so in two steps. First, the core of the proposal is to create a publicly available, high-quality data base of institution-level mortgage lending activity that will allow scholars to investigate the operation of local and regional mortgage markets between 1920 and 1940. Second, the co-PIs will use the data base as it is being assembled to investigate several of the topics enumerated above in order to stimulate a broad discussion of this important historical episode.The importance of the data collection component of the project is easy to understand?research in economics is drawn to issues that can be investigated with readily available, high-quality data. Such data exist for the residential mortgage market before 1940, but the information is spread out in thousands of printed volumes held that are held in public and university archives. The data sit in this form because the dominant institutional mortgage lenders before 1940 were non-bank, state-chartered institutions such as Building & Loan Associations, Mutual Savings Banks and Life Insurance companies. The activities of these institutions were well-documented in annual reports of state regulatory authorities, but this information needs to collected, digitized and organized into a reliable and widely available data set. Most of the funding for this project will support photographing and digitizing the state-level reports; preparing extensive documentation so that these data can be easily used; and combining the institutional balance sheet data with neighborhood, city, and state level information on housing markets, economic activity and a broad range of demographic information. The data collection and assembly will take three years to complete and the collaborative structure of this project has been driven by its size and complexity.The co-PIs were drawn to this project after independently using federally-generated, county-level data to investigate one of the largest and most dramatic of the federal policy interventions of the 1930s?the Home Owners? Loan Corporation. The HOLC modified distressed mortgages on one-tenth of the nation?s owner-occupied homes between 1934 and 1936 and the work of the co-PIs have shown that this activity cushioned homeownership rates and home prices during the 1930s, but did not stimulate new home construction. In the course of these investigations the co-PIs became convinced that much more can be learned about HOLC?and FHA insurance, Fannie Mae discounting and FHLB supervision?if institution-level data were available to complement the county-level data they have already collected on mortgage and housing markets. The second phase of the project, therefore, will be a series of solo- and joint-authored empirical investigations by the co-PIs using the assembled data base. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff (in This Time is Different) have recently shown that the historical perspective can inform us about severe economic crises and shape our responses to them. It is unfortunate, in contrast, that we have yet to closely examine the mortgage crisis of the 1930s or to fully appreciate its hard-earned lessons. The goal of this project is to facilitate that discussion so that history can assist as we struggle to move through and beyond our own mortgage crisis.

项目摘要：繁荣与萧条时期的制度绩效与变化：住宅抵押贷款市场，1920-1940年始于2007年的住宅抵押贷款危机，就止赎率、房价和住宅财富的下降而言，比20世纪30年代以来的任何一次危机都更为严重。因此，20世纪20年代的建筑和抵押贷款繁荣以及30年代的萧条，为衡量我们自己的经历提供了惊人的历史基准。然而，历史可以发挥更重要的作用，因为它提供了调查三个问题的机会，这些问题在我们与自己的抵押贷款危机作斗争时非常重要和相关：为了更好地理解抵押贷款市场的混乱是如何导致大萧条的深度和持续时间，我们需要研究为什么20世纪30年代住宅市场的崩溃如此严重，复苏如此不均衡。这些问题与今天息息相关，因为抵押贷款规模在20世纪20年代迅速增长，就像当前危机之前一样；因为快速的创新改变了抵押贷款合同和融资渠道，导致了这两次事件；而且这两次危机的特点都是抵押贷款渠道普遍中断。2. 我们需要评估联邦紧急反应是否有效地缓解了20世纪30年代抵押贷款危机的影响。这些新政干预措施在规模和范围上都非同寻常，但与最近的政策相似，它们鼓励广泛修改抵押贷款。因此，研究20世纪30年代的紧急政策可以帮助我们更好地理解当前危机期间的应对措施是如何成功的，又是如何失败的。我们需要在国家制度结构之前，期间和之后检查抵押贷款市场的表现？美国的抵押贷款市场在1932年至1938年间被联邦住房贷款银行系统、现代储蓄贷款行业、联邦住房管理局住房抵押贷款保险计划、联邦全国抵押贷款协会（房利美）的创立和长期、分期偿还、低首付抵押贷款的引入永久地重塑了。这些机构继续构成现代抵押贷款市场的基本框架，了解它们的起源将为我们再次重塑它们提供重要指导。这三个问题都值得仔细研究，但几十年来，关于大萧条期间金融危机的讨论几乎完全集中在银行体系和股市上。本项目旨在纠正这种疏忽，第一次促使对上述问题进行认真审查。它分两步完成。首先，该提案的核心是创建一个公开可用的、高质量的机构级抵押贷款活动数据库，使学者能够调查1920年至1940年间地方和区域抵押贷款市场的运作。第二，共同调查专员将使用正在收集的数据库来调查上面列举的几个主题，以便促进对这一重要历史事件的广泛讨论。项目中数据收集部分的重要性是否容易理解？经济学研究被吸引到那些可以用现成的高质量数据进行调查的问题上。1940年以前的住房抵押贷款市场就有这样的数据，但这些信息分散在公共和大学档案馆中保存的数千册印刷品中。这些数据之所以采用这种形式，是因为在1940年之前，主要的机构抵押贷款机构是非银行的、国家特许的机构，如建筑贷款协会、互助储蓄银行和人寿保险公司。这些机构的活动在国家监管机构的年度报告中有很好的记录，但这些信息需要收集、数字化并组织成可靠且广泛可用的数据集。本项目的大部分资金将用于国家级报告的摄影和数字化；准备大量的文件，以便这些数据可以很容易地使用；并将机构资产负债表数据与社区、城市和州一级的住房市场、经济活动和广泛的人口信息相结合。数据收集和组装将需要三年时间才能完成，该项目的协作结构受到其规模和复杂性的驱动。在独立使用联邦生成的县级数据调查了20世纪30年代最大和最具戏剧性的联邦政策干预之一之后，共同pi被吸引到这个项目中来。房主？贷款公司。HOLC修改了全国十分之一的不良抵押贷款？从1934年到1936年，美国的自有住房数据和共同指数的研究表明，这种活动在20世纪30年代缓冲了房屋拥有率和房价，但没有刺激新房屋的建设。在这些调查过程中，共同调查官确信可以了解到更多关于HOLC的信息。联邦住房管理局保险，房利美贴现和联邦住房银行监管？如果机构一级的数据可以补充他们已经收集的关于抵押贷款和住房市场的县级数据。因此，该项目的第二阶段将是由联合pi使用组装的数据库进行一系列单独和联合撰写的实证调查。卡门·莱因哈特（Carmen Reinhart）和肯尼斯·罗格夫（Kenneth Rogoff）最近在《这次不同》（This Time is Different）一书中指出，历史视角可以让我们了解严重的经济危机，并影响我们对危机的反应。不幸的是，相比之下，我们还没有仔细研究上世纪30年代的抵押贷款危机，也没有充分认识到它来之不易的教训。这个项目的目标是促进这种讨论，以便历史可以帮助我们努力通过和超越我们自己的抵押贷款危机。