Empirical models of mortgage default typically find that the influence of unemployment is negligible compared to other … assigns a critical role to unemployment status in the decision to stop payment on a mortgage. We help reconcile this …

Academic research, government inquiries, and press accounts show extensive mortgage fraud during the housing boom of … the mid-2000s. We explore a particular type of mortgage fraud: the overstatement of income on mortgage applications. We … define “income overstatement” in a zip code as the growth in income reported on home-purchase mortgage applications minus the …

-primary houses fueled the entire mortgage boom during 2014Q4-2016Q3. The mortgage expansion disproportionately increased the share of … mortgage markets. Our cross-city evidence provides empirical support for this channel …

We investigate whether homeowners respond strategically to news of mortgage modification programs. We exploit plausibly … strategic behavior should be an important consideration in designing mortgage modification programs …

We explore the effects of mandatory third-party review of mortgage contracts on consumer choice--including the terms … and demand for mortgage credit. Our study is based on a legislative pilot carried out by the State of Illinois in a … selected set of zip codes in 2006. Mortgage applicants with low FICO scores were required to attend loan reviews by financial …

details search behavior for a large sample of mortgage borrowers, with loan application and rejection decisions. Our data … reveal substantial dispersion in mortgage rates and search intensity, conditional on observables. However, in contrast to …

This paper examines mortgage outcomes for a large, representative sample of individual home purchases and refinances …