By triggering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the bursting of the housing bubble in the first decade of the twenty-first century has brought renewed urgency to the study of housing and mortgage markets. Policymakers and economists, trying to make sense of the 2008 crisis, have been turning to history for guidance. In this regard, Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, edited by Eugene N. White, Kenneth Snowden, and Price Fishback, is a must read. The book assembles a collection of recent works from leading scholars on the historical development of housing and mortgage markets. Together, the articles shed rich, new insights. The key questions addressed by the book include: What are the similarities and differences between the housing booms and busts of the 1920s and early 2000s? How did early mortgage securitization markets evolve? What are the main drivers of the increase in home ownership rates in the United States over the past century? What are the linkages among the housing, financial and real sectors of the economy and how have those linkages changed over time?

The book is divided in four parts. The first part, “Housing and the Interwar Business Cycle,” examines the housing boom and bust of the interwar period, in relation to the developments of the early 2000s. The first article, by Alexander J. Field, and the second article, by Steven Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith, analyze the similarities and differences between the housing busts of the interwar period and the early 2000s. The third article by Eugene N. White evaluates 12 factors that have been cited as causes of the recent housing bubble to determine which of those forces also played a role in the 1920s.

The second part, “A Closer Look at the Interwar Housing Crisis,” continues its examination of the housing boom and bust of the interwar period. In the first article, Michael Brocker and Christopher Hanes examine cross-sectional evidence on building activity across U.S. cities and find that cities with greater real estate booms in the 1920s had larger declines in house values and higher foreclosure rates during the Depression, suggesting a link between the 1920s housing boom and the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the second article, Price Fishback and Trevor Kollmann reevaluate the widely cited Case-Shiller home price index and construct alternative measures for the change in home values between 1920 and 1940 by examining data from the Financial Survey of Housing; their new home price series differs in substantive ways from the Case-Shiller series. In the third article, Jonathan D. Rose analyzes the resolution of the financial difficulties experienced by building and loan associations in Newark, New Jersey, during the 1930s; in the process, he provides insights into the evolution of an industry that was at the heart of the real estate troubles of the interwar period.

The third part, “Securitization in Earlier Times,” analyzes two forms of successful mortgage securitization from earlier times: (1) the financing of property development in western New York state and Washington DC in Dutch securities markets in the 1790s (in an article by Rik Frehen, William N. Goetzmann, and K. Geert Rouwenhorst), and (2) the development of mortgage securitization markets in Prussia in the eighteenth century (in an article by Kirsten Wandschneider). These articles may be particularly relevant for current-day policymakers charged with the task of safeguarding financial stability. For example, in her article on the creation of mortgage markets in eighteenth century Prussia, Wandschneider characterizes the Landschaften, cooperative mortgage credit associations, and their issuing of Pfandbrief, a type of covered mortgage bond, as a form of financial innovation that increased access to credit, while reducing concerns of moral hazard and adverse selection via dual recourse, joint liability, and local monitoring—topics of policy interest today.

The fourth part, “Postwar Housing Policies,” examines the effects of postwar housing policies on homeownership in the United States. In the first article, Daniel K. Fetter analyzes several forces, including demographics, higher disposable income, tax policy, and the development of the modern system of mortgage finance, that may have contributed to the increase in homeownership rates in the United States after 1940. In the final article, Matthew Chambers, Carlos Garriga, and Don E. Schlagenhauf construct a dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze the influence of an array of factors, including many of those studied by Fetter, on changes in homeownership in the United States; in doing so, they provide a theoretical framework that nicely complements the empirical work of Fetter.

If history is any guide for the future, housing is likely to remain a crucial force behind the development of broader economic trends in the years ahead. As such, it is crucial for economic historians and policymakers to possess a rich understanding of how housing markets have evolved over time—chief goals of this volume. The collection of articles brought together in this volume provides an array of stunning insights from leading scholars in the field. Moreover, as the book notes in its introductory chapter, in the aftermath of the financial crises of the 1930s, the NBER commissioned a series of studies to examine the role played by housing in the financial debacle of that decade. This book serves as an excellent follow up to the stellar scholarship of the earlier period, helping us to better understand the development of housing and mortgage markets, while simultaneously highlighting the lessons from history that are relevant for today. Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective is an excellent piece of scholarship and an essential reference for researchers in the field.