Replication data for: Predators and Prey: Segregation's Effect on Subprime Lending and the Housing Crisis

Jacob Rugh and Douglas Massey's (2010) article, "Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis," argues that segregation was a key cause of the foreclosure crisis by creating niche subprime markets of minority clients who were dierentially targeted by predatory lending. Their analytical model fails to demonstrate the role of segregation in the housing crisis. By using an inappropriate outcome variable, having post-treatment bias, and overfitting, their model does not capture the process described in their theory. We improve their analysis using an index of predatory l ending as the outcome variable and demonstrate how subprime lending did indeed concentrate in clusters of high minority areas. We more accurately assess the causal role of segregation using matching techniques. Our findings support their theoretical claim of the important role of segregation in impacting the foreclosure crisis and suggest that segregation had a key role in facilitating the housing bubble burst.

雅各布·鲁（Jacob Rugh）与道格拉斯·梅西（Douglas Massey）2010年发表的论文《种族隔离与美国止赎危机》（Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis）提出，种族隔离是美国止赎危机的关键诱因：它催生了面向少数群体客户的细分次级贷款市场，而这类群体成为掠夺性放贷（predatory lending）的差异化瞄准目标。然而该研究的分析模型未能证实种族隔离在住房危机中的作用——由于选用不当的结果变量、存在处理后偏误（post-treatment bias）以及过拟合（overfitting）问题，其模型未能捕捉到其理论中所描述的作用机制。本研究以掠夺性放贷指数作为结果变量，对其分析框架进行改进，并证实次级放贷确实集中于少数群体占比高的区域集群。我们通过匹配方法（matching techniques）更精准地评估了种族隔离的因果作用。本研究结果既支持了其关于种族隔离对止赎危机具有重要影响的理论主张，也表明种族隔离在推动房地产泡沫破裂过程中发挥了关键作用。