How much can government-driven mortgage modification programs reduce the mortgage default rate? I compare an economy without a modification option to one with easy modifications, and evaluate the impact of these loan modifications on the foreclosure rate. Through loan modification, mortgage...

A commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) is a claim on future returns to a bundle of loans. Empirically, loans that are securitized “in-house” -- when the loan originator is vertically integrated with the issuer of the CMBS -- outperform loans securitized by unaffiliated issuers. I...

We provide a framework for empirical analysis of negotiated-price markets. Using mortgage market data and a search and negotiation model, we characterize the welfare impact of search frictions and quantify the role of search costs and brand loyalty for market power. Search frictions reduce...

Studies of mortgage approvals find that minority borrowers are more likely to be denied loans, even when background variables such as current-year income are held constant. This article demonstrates that relying on current year income when comparing racial outcomes leads to an overestimation of...

This paper explains how unobserved borrower risk factors and changing economic expectations can interact to create vintage effects and parameter instability in mortgage credit risk models. We develop a model of mortgage choice and default behavior that demonstrates how this could have led to...

This Article argues for a new regulatory approach that could both increase market efficiency and protect informational privacy in the modern information economy. It explores that approach - information intermediation, or infomediation - in the context of the current debates about re-engineering...

The Great Recession resulted in bank failures that exceeded the savings and loan (S&L) crisis in terms of percentage of institutions and the volume of assets of banks that failed. While much of the literature focuses “subprime” mortgages and its role in this financial crisis, we focus on the...

I study the effects of an increase in the supply of local mortgage credit on local house prices and employment by exploiting a natural experiment from Switzerland. In mid-2008, losses in U.S. security holdings triggered a migration of dissatisfied retail customers from a large, universal bank,...

I develop a structural model of mortgage demand and lender competition to study how leverage regulation affects the equilibrium in the UK mortgage market. Using variation in risk-weighted capital requirements across lenders and across mortgages with differential loan-to-values, I show that a...

The main purpose of the article is to analyse the most important borrower characteristics determining preferences in the choice of the interest rate formula in mortgage contracts. Based on the PFSA statistics, the portfolio of newly-issued mortgages in 2016 was analysed to identify a group of...