Items with a * are fair game for exams.
1. The Housing Bubble
Economist John Taylor blames policy makers (including the Fed) for the Great Recession in the American Economic Review.
* Taylor, John. 2014. “The Role of Policy in the Great Recession and the Weak Recovery.” The American Economic Review, 104(5): 61-66.
Here is a 2008 Washington Post article on the housing boom and bust.
Klein, Alec and Zachary Goldfarb, 6/15/08. “The Bubble: How Homeowners, Speculators, and Wall Street Dealmakers Rode a Wave of Easy Money with Crippling Consequences.” Washington Post.
This paper from the Economic Journal is a more academic source. It shows that lenders in areas with rapidly rising housing prices responded by lowering their standards. I encourage you to give it a shot. While the bulk of the paper will probably give you trouble (e.g. the econometric sections), the introduction nicely summarizes the authors’ findings.
Duca, J., Muellbauer, J., and A. Murphy. 2011. “House Prices and Credit Constraints: Making Sense of the US Experience.” Economic Journal, Vol. 121 (552): 533-551.
This policy paper from the Brookings Institute discusses poor housing affordability in the U.S. post-pandemic.
Gyourko, J. March 18, 2026. “Thinking About the Growing Housing Affordability problem. Brooking’s Reserach.
2. Speculative Bubbles
*Broughal, James. May 7, 2026. “How We Know the Housing Boom Became a Bubble.” Forbes.
Robert Shiller has a New York Times op/ed piece on information cascades:
Shiller, Robert. 3/2/08. “How a Bubble Stayed Under the Radar,” New York Times
This paper from the New York Fed from 2004 considers the issue of whether there was a housing bubble. It ultimately concludes that there was no bubble. Keep in mind that 1) the authors didn’t have the benefit of hindsight, and 2) it was written prior to the peak of the bubble.
McCarthy, J. and R. Peach. 2004. “Are Home Prices the Next Bubble.” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review, 10(3): 1-17.
Here are some lecture notes from Peter Ireland on the asset pricing model. There are a few differences from the model presented in class, namely he ignores expectations and assumes a constant interest rate.
Paul Shea 