As the national mortgage crisis has worsened, an increasing number of communities are facing declining housing prices and high rates of foreclosure. Central to the call for government intervention in this crisis is the claim that foreclosures not only hurt those who are losing their homes to...

We now know that the subprime market presented consumers with sub-optimal choices that they took, and that it contained many market imperfections. The interesting question, then, is what were the sources of imperfections. In the spirit of providing an introduction for this special issue of the...