Abstract
What can “big data” tell us about the dynamics shaping the regulation of and activities in housing and mortgage markets? This paper describes a detailed database of the lobbying activities, campaign contributions, political connections, and mortgage lending activities of the financial industry. A review of the findings of recent research that has utilized this data set suggests that the political influence of the financial industry may have a bearing on the regulation of mortgage markets and, in turn, on risk-taking by lenders. A key challenge is deciphering the motivations behind the politically targeted activities of the financial industry.
- Copyright © 2016 by Russell Sage Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Reproduction by the United States Government in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose. I am grateful to Atif Mian, Prachi Mishra, Howard Rosenthal, and participants in the Russell Sage Foundation “Big Data in Political Economy” conference for useful comments and suggestions. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Direct correspondence to: Deniz Igan at digan{at}imf.org, 700 19th St. NW, Washington, D.C., 20431.
Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.