The housing meltdown
Subtitle: Why did it happen in the United States?
By: by Luci Ellis.
Contributors: Bank for International Settlements. Monetary and Economic Dept.
Series: BIS working papers -- no. 259
Publisher: Bank for International Settlements
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Basel, Switzerland
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: The crisis enveloping global financial markets since August 2007 was triggered by actual and prospective credit losses on US mortgages. Was the United States just unlucky to have been the first to experience a housing crisis? Or was it inherently more susceptible to one? I examine the limited international evidence available, to ask how the boom-bust cycle in the US housing market differed from elsewhere and what the underlying institutional drivers of these differences were. Compared with other countries, the United States seems to have: built up a larger overhang of excess housing supply; experienced a greater easing in mortgage lending standards; and ended up with a household sector more vulnerable to falling housing prices. Some of these outcomes seem to have been driven by tax, legal and regulatory systems that encouraged households to increase their leverage and permitted lenders to enable that development. Given the institutional background, it may have been that the US housing boom was always more likely to end badly than the booms elsewhere.
Notes: Title from PDF file (viewed on Oct. 10, 2008).

"September 2008."

"Monetary and Economic Department."

Includes bibliographical references.

Also available in print.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.