We design and implement an experimental test for differential response by mortgage loan originators (MLOs) to requests for information about loans. Our e-mail correspondence experiment is designed to analyze differential treatment by client race and credit score. Our results show net discrimination by 1.8% of MLOs through non-response. We also find that MLOs offer more details about loans and are more likely to send follow up correspondence to whites. The effect of being African American on MLO response is equivalent to the effect of having a credit score that is 71 points lower.

Housing market distortions from the mortgage interest deduction (MID) typically focus on a single choice measure such as home size or selfreported amount of debt on a new mortgage. We estimate the amount of mortgage interest deducted on federal tax returns to capture the full range of housing market distortions from the MID. Our primary results show that for every one percentage point increase in the tax rate that applies to deductibility, the amount of mortgage interest deducted increases by US$303 to US$590. Empirical estimates imply elasticities of mortgage interest deducted with respect to the after-tax cost of housing between À0.78 and À1.62, and deadweight loss estimates ranging from 16 to 36 percent of MID tax expenditure. Downloaded fromThe largest government intervention in housing markets is the mortgage interest deduction (MID). The Executive Office of the President (2011) estimates that the MID amounts to US$98.5 billion in foregone revenues in 2012 and US$609 billion between 2012 and 2016. There is a large and growing literature suggesting that the MID distorts housing market decisions, mainly by increasing the demand for mortgage debt in favor of equity financing (Jones 1995;Ling and McGill 1998;Dunsky and Follain 2000;Hendershott and Pryce 2006;Poterba and Sinai 2011) or increasing the size of home (Hanson 2012a). 1 The MID may also distort decisions by inducing renters to become owners, incentivizing the purchase of a second home, purchasing a larger lot, choosing a longer term mortgage, changing the speed that debt is paid off, and inducing those who would otherwise claim the standard deduction to itemize their tax deductions (or to increase other itemized deductions). The existing body of work on the distortions caused by the MID may not be sufficient to measure the full deadweight loss (DWL) from the subsidy because it does not jointly capture all of these distortions.To capture the full distortion caused by the MID, we measure how sensitive MID claims are to the interaction between MID availability and marginal tax rates. This is analogous to Feldstein (1995Feldstein ( , 1999 relating the full distortion from the income tax to the sensitivity of taxable income, rather than a more narrow measure like hours worked or labor force participation. We relate the distortion from the MID to the sensitivity of mortgage interest deducted to capture the full distortionary effect of the deduction, rather than a more narrow measure like home size or self-reported levels of housing debt. While we consider many of these more narrow measures interesting in their own right, 2 a more comprehensive measure is necessary to accurately portray DWL from the MID. 3 Using Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ZIP code-level data, we first estimate the sensitivity of MID claims to state-level variation in top marginal income tax rates and availability of the MID. In addition to weighted least squares (WLS), we use several comparison groups to estimate this relationship, as well as estimating with instrumental variables (IV)....

Evictions are a serious risk for households facing job loss and economic upheaval during the COVID-19 pandemic, and temporary policies put in place to protect renters are beginning to expire. To understand how the crisis is affecting evictions, we measure eviction filing activity across 44 cities and counties. As of July 7, 2020, eviction filings have almost returned to their prepandemic levels in places where local bans have expired or where they were never enacted. We find that eviction filings tend to surge after temporary policies expire much more in places that enacted both filing bans and hearing bans than those that enacted just hearing bans while allowing filings to continue. As federal stimulus supplements for the unemployed expire, evictions are likely to increase for households that have lost work because of the crisis unless there is material improvement in the economy (Mervosh 2020).

We simulate changes to metropolitan area home prices from reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID). Price simulations are based on an extended user cost model that incorporates two dimensions of behavioral change in home buyers: sensitivity of borrowing and the propensity to use tax deductions. We simulate prices with both inelastic and elastic supply. Our results show a wide range of price effects across metropolitan areas and prospective policies. Considering behavioral change and no supply elasticity, eliminating the MID results in average home price declines as steep as 13.5 percent in Washington, D.C., and as small as 3.5 percent in Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Converting the MID to a 15 percent refundable credit reduces prices by as much as 1.4 percent in

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