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

本项目对大萧条期间的住房市场、住房金融机构和收入分配变化进行微观经济研究，使用城市和社区层面的数据面板来分析这些市场如何受到各种因素的影响，包括联邦、州和地方政府的政策。与大萧条时期相比，目前对房地产泡沫可能破裂的担忧显得微不足道。在经历了20世纪20年代末的房地产繁荣之后，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历史学家以及20世纪50年代的几位NBER经济学家发表了关于20世纪30年代住房微观经济学的研究。住房尤其重要，因为它占家庭资产的很大比例，抵押贷款通常是家庭债务的主要形式。新政的执行者们将住房视为一个主要问题，并建立了几个项目来解决住房问题，其中包括房主贷款公司（HOLC），它在1933-1934年间为所有抵押贷款提供了20%的再融资；联邦住房管理局（Federal housing Administration）开始为房屋修缮和重建提供抵押贷款和贷款保险。本项目使用一系列面板数据集分析大萧条时期的房地产市场，这些数据集将从原始来源和政府文件中构建。它分析了20世纪20年代和30年代200多个城市的年度建筑许可活动。对于美国所有县，该项目研究了1930年至1940年人口普查期间美国所有县7至11个价值范围内房屋所有权、房屋价值和租金分布的变化。在将20世纪30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年的信息进行匹配后，该项目研究了房屋拥有率的下降。20世纪20年代末到30年代中期的平均房价和租金，以及1939年美国200个城市房价和租金的回升情况。基于以前保密的HOLC住房研究，该项目研究了200个城市数千个社区不同住房质量的住房价值的萧条和复苏，重点研究了社区便利和不便利、收入水平以及社区间种族和民族差异的影响。研究人员利用来自至少22个城市的住房金融调查的回顾性信息，追踪了1929年至1933年各城市经济衰退的变化如何影响1929年、1932年和1933年收入分配不同部分的特定家庭群体的收入。调查人员还调查了大量城市在1933年至1940年间不同收入水平家庭所占比例的变化情况。利用HOLC对大约200个城市的所有抵押贷款机构的调查，他们分析了在全国不同地区提供抵押贷款的机构类型的巨大横断面差异，以及20世纪30年代机构角色的变化以及他们同意的抵押贷款合同类型。整个项目考察了联邦政府项目与州和地方税收和支出项目在这些住房市场和收入分配方面的相互作用。更广泛的影响：该项目拓宽了我们对影响房地产市场的因素的理解，特别是在大萧条时期。创建的数据集和发布的记录的.pdf文件副本为其他对这些和其他与20世纪30年代相关的主题感兴趣的研究人员提供了大量的公共利益，并在20世纪期间辨别长期趋势。

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.