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Self-published

Foreclosures and mortgage lending during the Great Depression (ICPSR 119723)

Released/updated on: 2020-06-04
Geographic coverage: United States
Time period: 1927-01-01--1940-12-31
These are the replication files for the paper "Collateral Damage: The Impact of Foreclosures on New Home Mortgage Lending in the 1930s" to be published in the September 2020 issue of the Journal of Economic History.

Abstract of the paper: The Great Depression of the 1930s involved a severe disruption in the supply of home mortgage credit. This paper empirically identifies a mechanism lying behind this credit crunch: the impairment of lenders’ balance sheets by illiquid foreclosed real estate. With data on hundreds of building and loans (B&Ls), the leading mortgage lenders in this period, we find that the overhang of foreclosed real estate explains about 30 percent of the drop in new lending between 1930 and 1935