Schoar talks about the role of housing markets in the run up to and in the aftermath of the crisis—the topic of the paper she co-authored with Manuel Adelino and Felipe Severino. Her main point is that the prevailing narratives about the housing crisis are largely incorrect. The crisis was not chiefly driven by subprime mortgages or lower income cohorts. Instead, she concludes that a major culprit was optimistic house price expectations, which led to an expansion of credit and delinquencies.

A session from the 2008 Financial Crisis: A Ten-Year Review conference held on 8-9 November 2018 in New York.