The housing market in the UK and US have been described as 'frothy' in recent months. The Bank of England has even gone as far as removing its Funding for Lending scheme from households with effect from 2014. The housing market in many economies has been indirectly supported by extensive nursing of banks by taxpayers. In addition, low nominal borrowing rates and near-zero (if not negative) real interest rates have provided the fuel for yet another housing boom and bust. None other than Nouriel Roubini is also concerned about overheating housing markets around the world - click here to read more.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...