How much did the housing shock drive political polarization?

From Henry van Straehlen, a job market candidate from Northwestern:

This paper studies the effect of economic conditions on political polarization using micro-data on house prices, mortgages, and individual political contributions. I argue that shocks to housing wealth — the largest asset for most households in the U.S. — lead to political polarization. Using the housing market bust of 2007-2011 as an empirical laboratory, I show that negative shocks to housing wealth increase political polarization. The richness of the data enables me to use individual heterogeneity in housing location and timing of home purchase to disentangle changes in personal wealth from other factors that might be at play in determining political polarization. The effect of housing shocks on polarization is stronger during the crisis, and cannot be attributed to reverse causality or changing neighborhood composition. Survey evidence comparing homeowners and renters shows that only homeowners polarize in response to house price shocks, while renters do not — suggesting that house price shocks are not merely a proxy for other economic shocks. Furthermore, extreme politicians benefit electorally from negative house price shocks to their contributor network, whereas moderate politicians are hurt by negative house price shocks. Financial crises destabilize politics, which then can feed back into the crisis. These results provide insight into the difficulty of adopting structural economic reforms following financial crises.

Work in progress by Henry argues: “I show that when the common ownership between two firms increases through mutual fund acquisition of their stock, the firms converge in political donation behavior and lobbying activity.”