Loan commitments increase a bank's risk by obligating it to issue future loans under terms that it might otherwise refuse. However, moral hazard and adverse selection problems potentially may result in these contracts being rationed or sorted. Depending on the relative risks of the borrowers who...

An examination of how and why individual financial institutions vary in their propensity to attract and approve mortgage applications from minorities, using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data.

A baseline evaluation of the variation in mortgage credit flows across different types of neighborhoods using HMDA data collected in 1990 and 1991.

A discussion of how mortgage lenders might use posted lending terms to signal both their eagerness to take new loan applications and their lending standards.

A lender-specific analysis of differences in minority and low-income mortgage loan originations using new applicant-level data gathered under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975.

A documentation of racial and neighborhood differences in home mortgage denial rates using data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, exploring the extent to which objective lending criteria are responsible for observed differences. The authors find persistent variations in denial...

An examination of how information about a neighborhood affects the level of lending activity in it--specifically, whether lenders deny mortgage applications at higher rates in neighborhoods where they have little experience in evaluating applications and/or where the lending community in general...

Risk-based capital (RBC) is an important component of deposit insurance reform. This paper provides an empirical analysis of the new 1992 RBC bank standards, applying them to data on virtually all U.S. banks from 1982 to 1989. The data reveal strong associations between several measures of...