The Political Economy of the Subprime Mortgage Credit Expansion

Atif Mian, Amir Sufi and Francesco Trebbi

No 16107, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine how special interests, measured by campaign contributions from the mortgage industry, and constituent interests, measured by the share of subprime borrowers in a congressional district, may have influenced U.S. government policy toward the housing sector during the subprime mortgage credit expansion from 2002 to 2007. Beginning in 2002, mortgage industry campaign contributions increasingly targeted U.S. representatives from districts with a large fraction of subprime borrowers. During the expansion years, mortgage industry campaign contributions and the share of subprime borrowers in a congressional district increasingly predicted congressional voting behavior on housing related legislation. The evidence suggests that both subprime mortgage lenders and subprime mortgage borrowers influenced government policy toward housing finance during the subprime mortgage credit expansion.

JEL-codes: D72 G21 L51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-pol and nep-ure
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Published as Mian, Atif & Sufi, Amir & Trebbi, Francesco, 2013. "The Political Economy of the Subprime Mortgage Credit Expansion," International Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 8(4), pages 373-408, October.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16107.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Political Economy of the Subprime Mortgage Credit Expansion (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16107

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16107

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().