This study uses the 2008 mortgage crisis to demonstrate how the relationship between vertical integration and performance crucially depends on corporate governance. Prior research has argued that the vertical integration of mortgage origination and securitization aligned divisional incentives...

Real estate transactions are often established through financing. We study the effect of financing on property prices. We show that properties can transact at prices well above their collateral values. Therefore, the commonly used loan-to-value (LTV) ratio suffers a bias that can significantly...

The commercial real estate market is pro-cyclical. This feature, together with the relative size of the industry and the large capital inflows, has made this sector relevant for financial stability. Using a novel loan level data set covering the commercial real estate portfolios of Dutch banks...

In December 2013 the National Bank of Belgium introduced a sectoral capital requirement aimed at strengthening the resilience of Belgian banks against adverse developments in the real estate market. This paper assesses the impact of this macroprudential measure on mortgage lending spreads. Our...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we present an up-to-date assessment of the differences across euro area countries in the distributions of various measures of debt conditional on household characteristics. We consider three different outcomes: the probability of holding debt, the amount...

This study aims to explain causal relationships between the two dramatic cycles observed in the U.S. during the recent financial crisis - the mortgage credit cycle and the home price cycle. In the viewpoint of mortgage lending, the main demand-side driver for the observed credit concentration...

The extension of the subprime mortgage crisis to a global financial meltdown led to calls for fundamental reregulation of the United States financial system. However, that reregulation has been slow in implementation and the proposals under discussion are far from fundamental. One explanation...

We describe a set of six design principles for the reorganization of the U.S. housing finance system and apply them to one model for replacing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that has so far received frequent mention but little sustained analysis – the lender cooperative utility. We discuss the...

The banking sector in the United Kingdom (UK) was deeply affected by the crisis. Bank credit has collapsed reflecting both weak demand and tighter supply. New prudential requirements have improved the resilience of the banking sector and a number of measures were taken to support credit supply....

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, policymakers in the United States and elsewhere have adopted stress testing as a central tool for supervising large, complex, financial institutions and promoting financial stability. Although supervisory stress testing may confer substantial...