empirical evidence supporting the view that innovation in consumer credit and home mortgages reduced cyclical variations of key … economic variables. We find that especially the behaviour of aggregate home mortgages changed less during the great moderation … than is typically believed. For example, aggregate home mortgages declined during monetary tightenings, both before and …

reform in Italy that reduced penalties on outstanding mortgages and banned penalties on newly-issued mortgages. Using a … unique dataset of mortgages issued by a large Italian lender before and after the reform, we provide evidence that: 1) before … the reform, mortgages issued to riskier borrowers included larger penalties; 2) higher prepayment penalties decreased …

competing lenders. Finally, increased ability to securitize mortgages appears to have affected lender behaviour, with lending …

, and mortgages among households aged fifty or more in thirteen countries, using new and comparable survey data. We employ … smaller ones in homes, and to have larger mortgages in older age, even controlling for characteristics. This is consistent …

foreclosure. We find that the reform caused a permanent drop in the Chapter 7 bankruptcy rate relative to pre-reform levels, due … increase in the rate of foreclosure. We find no evidence of a link between the decline in bankruptcy and a rise in the number …