Review
This comprehensive assessment of the subprime mortgage market is the right book, at the right time, by the right author. Gramlich draws on his substantial mortgage industry knowledge and his record of academic excellence to sort through the often-contradictory literature on the rapidly evolving mortgage market and the recent wave of foreclosures that threaten to harm so many vulnerable families. This book will certainly be required reading for students in my own housing policy course. --William C. Apgar, Senior Scholar, Joint Center for Housing Studies, and Lecturer, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
A clear and judicious analysis of both the benefits and drawbacks resulting from the rapid growth in the subprime home mortgage market, with thoughtful recommendations for reforming subprime lending. Gramlich draws on his unparalleled experience as a governor on the Federal Reserve Board to describe and evaluate the dramatic changes over the past several years. --John C. Weicher, Director, Center for Housing and Financial Markets, Hudson Institute, and Former Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
This terrific volume provides everything you want to know about the hottest topic in the mortgage market today: subprime lending. It explains the origins of the subprime market and weighs the gains of homeownership for some low-income households against the risks of default and loss. Recognizing that subprime lending is here to stay, it lays out steps to get rid of the most egregious aspects and make the market work better. Buy it and put the 'crisis' stories in perspective. --Alicia H. Munnell, Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences, Carroll School of Management, Boston College
About the Author
Edward M. Gramlich was the Richard B. Fisher Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. In 2005-2006, Dr. Gramlich was interim provost at the University of Michigan. From 1997 to 2005, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He is the Richard A. Musgrave Collegiate Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and served as dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Policy. He also served as chair of the Quadrennial Advisory Council on Social Security, first deputy and then acting director of the Congressional Budget Office, director of the Policy Research Division of the Office of Economic Opportunity, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Dr. Gramlich wrote a popular text on benefit-cost analysis that is now in its second edition (A Guide to Benefit-Cost Analysis, Waveland Press, 1997). He also wrote Is It Time to Reform Social Security? (University of Michigan Press, 1998). His work for the Urban Institute Press includes The Government We Deserve: Responsive Democracy and Changing Expectations (edited with C. Eugene Steuerle, Hugh Heclo, and Demetra Smith Nightingale, 1998). His other books and articles cover macroeconomic topics, housing, budget policy, income redistribution, fiscal federalism, and the economics of professional sports.
