Housing and mortgage markets in historical perspective.

• Position: Bureau Books

Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, edited by Eugene N. White, Kenneth Snowden, and Price Fishback, will be available from the University of Chicago Press in July 2014.

The central role of the housing market in the recent recession raised questions about its contribution to previous economic downturns. Were the underlying causes of housing and mortgage crises the same in earlier episodes? Has the onset and spread of crises changed over time? Did previous policy interventions either damage or improve long-run market performance and stability?

This volume begins to answer these questions, providing important context for understanding recent events by examining how historical housing and mortgage markets worked--and how they sometimes failed. The contributors to this...