Laws governing the foreclosure process can have direct consequences on the costs of foreclosure and could therefore affect lending decisions. We exploit the heterogeneity in the judicial requirements across U.S. states to examine their impact on banks’ lending decisions in a sample of urban...

Soaring real estate prices and valuations despite the economic downturn brought by the pandemic have focussed the attention of Dutch policymakers on potential macro-financial and socio-economic implications. In this context, our paper reviews the salient features of Dutch commercial and...

This paper shows that banks use accounting discretion to overstate the value of distressed assets. Banks'' balance sheets overvalue real estate-related assets compared to the market value of these assets, especially during the U.S. mortgage crisis. Share prices of banks with large exposure to...

Successful privatization must be accompanied by the complete removal of privileges and any public policy mission. Bank behavior changes rapidly as profit maximation replaces the bureaucratic objective function. Once privileges are granted, they are difficult to remove. Therefore, privatization...

Nonlocal mortgage lenders with greater exposure to high-growth housing markets accept fewer loan applications in these markets and experience greater stock return volatility. When these lenders expand to high-growth markets, they also ration credit to a significantly greater degree than when...

To identify and quantify downside risks to housing markets, we apply the house price-at-risk methodology to a sample of 37 cities across the United States and Canada using quarterly data from 1983 to 2018. This paper finds that downside risks to housing markets in the United States have...

We study the transmission of monetary shocks across euro-area countries using a dynamic factor model and high-frequency identification. We develop a methodology to assess the degree of heterogeneity, which we find to be low in financial variables and output, but significant in consumption,...

The sharp rise of house prices in China's Tier-1 cities has fostered a great deal of commentary about the possibility of bubbles forming there. However, China's unique housing market characteristics make it difficult to assess the macroeconomic severity of bursting bubbles, even if they exist....