This paper takes a skeptical look at a leading argument about what is causing the foreclosure crisis and distills some … mortgage and the lender's subsequent choice whether to renegotiate or "modify" the loan. The theoretical model and econometric … analysis illustrate that "unaffordable" loans, defined as those with high mortgage payments relative to income at origination …

mortgage default factors associated with the economic cycle, such as negative equity, completely account for the foreclosure … reinterpretation of the U.S. foreclosure crisis as more of a prime, rather than a subprime, borrower issue. Moreover, traditional …

In this paper we examine the relationship between homeowners' bankruptcy decisions and their mortgage default decisions … mortgages. Bankruptcy and foreclosure similarly may be either substitutes or complements. In fact we show that both … foreclosure rates raise homeowners' probability of foreclosure. We provide estimates of the size of these effects. The paper …

How much of the recent rise in foreclosures can be explained by the large number of high-leverage mortgage contracts … originated during the housing boom? We present a model where heterogeneous households select from a set of mortgage contracts and … choose whether to default on their payments given realizations of income and housing price shocks. The set of mortgage …

bust and to analyze foreclosure mitigation policy. We consider a dynamic search model in which foreclosures freeze the … the model fit both national and cross-sectional moments better than a model without foreclosure. When calibrated to the …

distortions in the supply of mortgage credit, evidenced by a decoupling of credit flow from income growth, may have caused the … rise in house prices and the subsequent housing market collapse. This paper shows that the increase in mortgage … to earlier years. We show that the relation between individual mortgage size and income growth during the housing boom …

unique design reflecting the subprime mortgage design. Subprime securitization tranches were often sold to CDOs, which were …