IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v41y2009i6p1420-1441.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Appetite for Yield: The Anatomy of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Philip Ashton

    (College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs, University of Illinois-Chicago, 412 S. Peoria, 217 CUPPA Hall (MC 348), Chicago, IL 60607, USA)

Abstract

Whereas policy makers and industry advocates have hailed the growth of the subprime mortgage market in the US as evidence that financial innovation can more efficiently price and absorb credit risk, the 2007 mortgage crisis provides an opportunity to revisit the nature of financial risk. This paper employs a forensic analysis of the development of the subprime market from the 1980s through 2007 to argue that, in a competitive environment marked by the greater integration between housing finance and capital/equity markets, financial innovations provide new opportunities to hedge risk even as they collapse the barriers to rivalries between firms. This has changed the terrain for risk assessment, promoting new modes of financial competition that have intensified systemic risk and extended it to a widening set of firms, households, and communities.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip Ashton, 2009. "An Appetite for Yield: The Anatomy of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 41(6), pages 1420-1441, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:41:y:2009:i:6:p:1420-1441
    DOI: 10.1068/a40328
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a40328
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a40328?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Souphala Chomsisengphet & Anthony Pennington-Cross, 2006. "The evolution of the subprime mortgage market," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 88(Jan), pages 31-56.
    2. A Leyshon & A Tickell, 1994. "Money Order? The Discursive Construction of Bretton Woods and the Making and Breaking of Regulatory Space," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 26(12), pages 1861-1890, December.
    3. John Farris & Christopher Richardson, 2004. "The geography of subprime mortgage prepayment penalty patterns," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 687-714.
    4. Ashcraft, Adam B. & Schuermann, Til, 2008. "Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 191-309, June.
    5. Shirley Chiu, 2006. "Nontraditional mortgages: appealing but misunderstood," Profitwise, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Dec.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rachel Weber, 2010. "Selling City Futures: The Financialization of Urban Redevelopment Policy," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 86(3), pages 251-274, July.
    2. Alan Walks, 2014. "From Financialization to Sociospatial Polarization of the City? Evidence from Canada," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 90(1), pages 33-66, January.
    3. Leigh Johnson, 2014. "Geographies of Securitized Catastrophe Risk and the Implications of Climate Change," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 90(2), pages 155-185, April.
    4. Desiree Fields, 2017. "Unwilling Subjects of Financialization," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(4), pages 588-603, July.
    5. Alan Walks, 2014. "Canada's Housing Bubble Story: Mortgage Securitization, the State, and the Global Financial Crisis," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 256-284, January.
    6. Gary A. Dymski, 2009. "Afterword: Mortgage Markets and the Urban Problematic in the Global Transition," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 427-442, June.
    7. Manuel B. Aalbers, 2009. "The Sociology and Geography of Mortgage Markets: Reflections on the Financial Crisis," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 281-290, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. W. Scott Frame & Lawrence J. White, 2009. "Technological change, financial innovation, and diffusion in banking," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2009-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    2. Gwinner, William B. & Sanders, Anthony, 2008. "The sub prime crisis : implications for emerging markets," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4726, The World Bank.
    3. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2012. "The Credit Ratings Game," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 85-112, February.
    4. Roberts, John & Jones, Megan, 2009. "Accounting for self interest in the credit crisis," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(6-7), pages 856-867, August.
    5. Gary Gorton, 2008. "The panic of 2007," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 131-262.
    6. Ahn, Jung-Hyun & Breton, Régis, 2014. "Securitization, competition and monitoring," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 195-210.
    7. Anatoli Segura & Alonso Villacorta, 2020. "Demand for safety, risky loans: A model of securitization," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1260, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    8. Pagès, Henri, 2013. "Bank monitoring incentives and optimal ABS," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 30-54.
    9. Béchir Bouzid, 2010. "Titrisation des emprunts hypothécaires et bulle immobilière aux États-Unis : les origines d’une débâcle," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 97(2), pages 101-142.
    10. Xudong An & Raphael W. Bostic, 2009. "Policy incentives and the extension of mortgage credit: Increasing market discipline for subprime lending," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 340-365.
    11. Günter Franke, 2013. "Known Unknowns in Verbriefungen," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 65(67), pages 1-34, January.
    12. David Murphy, 2008. "A preliminary enquiry into the causes of the Credit Crunch," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(5), pages 435-451.
    13. Gerard Caprio & Asli Demirgüç-Kunt & Edward J. Kane, 2010. "The 2007 Meltdown in Structured Securitization: Searching for Lessons, not Scapegoats," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 25(1), pages 125-155, February.
    14. Ashcraft, A. & Goldsmith-Pinkham, P. & Vickery, J., 2010. "MBS Ratings and the Mortgage Credit Boom," Other publications TiSEM aea4b6fb-eb57-49d4-a347-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    15. Christopher Mayer, 2010. "Comment on "Reducing Foreclosures: New Easy Answers"," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 139-148, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Patrick Bajari & Chenghuan Sean Chu & Minjung Park, 2008. "An Empirical Model of Subprime Mortgage Default From 2000 to 2007," NBER Working Papers 14625, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Stephen L. Ross, 2005. "The Continuing Practice and Impact of Discrimination," Working papers 2005-19, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Jul 2006.
    18. Dan Immergluck, 2011. "The Local Wreckage of Global Capital: The Subprime Crisis, Federal Policy and High‐Foreclosure Neighborhoods in the US," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 130-146, January.
    19. John Krainer & Elizabeth Laderman, 2014. "Mortgage Loan Securitization and Relative Loan Performance," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 39-66, February.
    20. Buchanan, Bonnie G., 2016. "Securitization: a financing vehicle for all seasons?," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 31/2016, Bank of Finland.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:41:y:2009:i:6:p:1420-1441. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.