Borrowing to Live

Consumer and Mortgage Credit Revisited

Nicolas P. Retsinas, Eric S. Belsky

• Publisher: Brookings Inst. Press/Harvard JCHS
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780815701729
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Policy
• Index: Economics

A Brookings Institution Press and Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies publication

Americans are awash in debt, and the U.S. economy is in trouble. Credit undergirds daily life more than ever—it has become one of the defining aspects of American life, and the ramifications are becoming clearer by the day. The already considerable damage from a depressed housing market has been exacerbated by the subprime lender implosion, sending shock waves through the financial sector, international economies, and government at all levels. Most low- or moderate-income people borrow, but that should not be construed as uniformly poor judgment or lack of disciplines—Americans are not borrowing merely to keep up with the Joneses, but too often simply to stay afloat.

In Borrowing to Live, the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University brings together a group of experts drawn from the best of academia, research, and public services. Together with editors Nicolas Retsinas and Eric Belsky, they dissect the worrisome current state of consumer and mortgage credit in the United States and help point the way out of the current struggles.

Contributors: Michael S. Barr, Eric S. Belsky, Raphael W. Bostic, Shawn Cole, Amy Crews Cutts, Kathleen C. Engel, Ren S. Essene, Elaine Kempson, Patricia A. McCoy, William A. Merrill, Sendhil Mullainathan, Anthony Pennington-Cross, Elizabeth Renuart, Eldar Shafir, Edna R. Sawady, Jennifer Tescher, John Thompson, Peter Tufano, Susan M. Wachter

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Information
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Borrowing to Live
• Consumer Mortgage Credit at the Crossroads
• Where Does It Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained
• Financual Decisionmaking Processes of Low-Income Individuals
• The Legal Infrastructure of Subprime and Nontraditional Mortgages
• The Impact of State Antipredatory Lending Laws: Policy Implications and Insights
• Behaviorally Informed Home Mortgage Credit Regulation
• Interventions in Mortgage Default: Policies and Practices to Prevent Home Loss and Lower Costs
• Looking beyond Our Shores: Consumer Protection Regulation Lessons from the United Kingdom
• Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover
• Untitled