Fixing the Housing Market : Financial Innovations for the Future

Ever since the ancient Greeks, financial innovation has enabled more people to purchase homes. Today is no different: in fact, responsible financial innovation is now the best tool available for ;rebooting ; crippled housing markets, improving their efficiency, and making housing more accessible to millions. In Fixing the Housing Market, three leading experts explain how, covering everything decision-makers should know about today's housing and financial markets. The authors first explain how innovative housing financial products, services and institutions evolved through the 19th century, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and beyond -- culminating in the post-1970s era of securitization. Next, they assess housing finance systems in mature economies during and after the recent crisis, highlighting benefits and risks associated with each widely-used mortgage funding structure and product. They also carefully assess current housing finance structures in emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Building on these insights, the authors introduce transformative financial innovations that can facilitate a more stable and sustainable financing system for housing -- providing better shelter for more people, helping the industry recover, and creating thousands of new jobs. Using these new tools, entrepreneurs, economic development specialists, and policymakers can develop practical strategies for bridging funding gaps -- raising more capital for longer terms at lower cost.

Franklin Allen is the Nippon Life Professor of Finance and Professor of Economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been on the faculty since 1980. A current codirector of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center, he was formerly vice dean and director of Wharton Doctoral Programs as well as executive editor of the Review of Financial Studies, one of the nation’s leading academic finance journals. Allen is a past president of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, the Society for Financial Studies, and the Financial Intermediation Research Society. His main areas of interest are corporate finance, asset pricing, financial innovation, comparative financial systems, and financial crises. He is a coauthor, with Richard Brealey and Stewart Myers, of the eighth through tenth editions of the textbook Principles of Corporate Finance. In addition, he is coauthor, with Glenn Yago, of Financing the Future: Market-Based Innovations for Growth. Allen received his doctorate from Oxford University.

James R. Barth is the Lowder Eminent Scholar in Finance at Auburn University and a Senior Finance Fellow at the Milken Institute. His research focuses on financial institutions and capital markets, both domestic and global, with special emphasis on regulatory issues. He has served as leader of an international team advising the People’s Bank of China on banking reform and traveled to China, India, Russia, and Egypt to lecture on various financial topics for the U.S. State Department. He was interviewed about the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the Congressional Oversight Panel. An appointee of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Barth was chief economist of the Office of Thrift Supervision and previously the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. He has also held the positions of professor of economics at George Washington University, associate director of the economics program at the National Science Foundation, and Shaw Foundation Professor of Banking and Finance at Nanyang Technological University. He has been a visiting scholar at the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the World Bank. Barth has testified before the U.S. House and Senate banking committees on several occasions. He has authored more than 200 articles in professional journals and has written and edited several books, including The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Mortgage and Credit Markets: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Meltdown; Rethinking Bank Regulation: Till Angels Govern; Financial Restructuring and Reform in Post-WTO China; China’s Emerging Markets: Challenges and Opportunities; The Great Savings and Loan Debacle; and The Reform of Federal Deposit Insurance. His most recent book is Guardians of Finance: Making Regulators Work for Us. Barth is the coeditor of The Journal of Financial Economic Policy and overseas associate editor of The Chinese Banker. He has been quoted in news publications ranging from The New York Times, The Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal to Time and Newsweek. In addition, he has appeared on such broadcast programs as Newshour, Good Morning America, Moneyline, Bloomberg News, Fox Business News, and National Public Radio. Barth is also included in Who’s Who in Economics: A Biographical Dictionary of Major Economists, 1700 to 1995.

Glenn Yago is Senior Fellow/Senior Director at the Milken Institute and its Israel Center. He is also a visiting professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he directs the Koret–Milken Institute Fellows program. Yago is Founder of the Institute’s Financial Innovations Labs®, which focus on the innovative use of finance to solve long-standing economic development, social, and environmental challenges. His financial research and demonstration projects have contributed to policy innovations fostering the democratization of capital to traditionally underserved markets and entrepreneurs in the United States and around the world. Yago is the coauthor of several books, including The Rise and Fall of the U. S. Mortgage and Credit Markets; Global Edge; Restructuring Regulation and Financial Institutions; and Beyond Junk Bonds. In addition, he is coauthor, with Franklin Allen, of Financing the Future: Market-Based Innovations for Growth. He was formerly a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and at the City University of New York Graduate Center’s Ph.D. Program in Economics. Yago earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

A nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, the Milken Institute believes in the power of capital markets to solve urgent social and economic challenges. Its mission is to improve lives around the world by advancing innovative economic and policy solutions that create jobs, widen access to capital, and enhance health.