This paper analyzes how financial literacy and reported willingness to take financial risk impact a household's choice of mortgage type. The results show that households reporting higher financial literacy and lower risk aversion are 55 to 97 percent more likely to opt for interest-only...

Homeowners hold a large part of their wealth in real estate and finance it with (recourse) mortgage debt. Mortgage insurance is a means to insure wealth risk that emerges from the liability to repay in case of default. However, it is a well-known fact that individuals are overconfident in the...

This paper examines how broker involvement in during mortgage origination affects the leverage of borrowers. Using loan-to-value and debt-coverage-ratios of mortgages, we document that despite commission incentives being present, broker involvement is not systematically related to increases in...

This paper analyzes how financial literacy and reported willingness to take financial risk impact a household's choice of mortgage type. The results show that households reporting higher financial literacy and lower risk aversion are 55 to 97 percent more likely to opt for interest-only...