We analyze a model of mortgage markets, housing tenure choice, heterogeneous agents, and default with closed form solutions. We uncover new insights which may inspire empirical work, and we ground already-established insights in a series of tractable expressions. Then we study optimal LTV...

In this paper, we estimate credit demand for potential Irish first time buyer households currently living in the rental sector. Exploiting individual survey responses to credit demand questions, and characteristics of the household, we estimate the level of latent credit demand that could be...

In this paper the authors present an agent-based model of a credit network economy. The artificial economy includes different economic agents that interact using simple behavioral rules through various markets, i.e., the consumption goods market, the labor market, the credit market and the...

This paper investigates the housing and mortgage markets by means of an agent-based macroeconomic model of a credit network economy. A set of computational experiments have been carried out in order to explore the effects of different households’ creditworthiness conditions required by banks...

The surge in subprime mortgage defaults during the Great Recession triggered trillions of dollars of losses in the financial sector and accounted for more than 50% of foreclosures at the height of the crisis. In particular, subprime mortgages originated in 2006-2007 were three times more likely...

The late 1990s through the mid-2000s was a period of historic growth in mortgage lending and house prices and there is intense debate over whether lending growth was a cause or consequence of house price growth. I show that lending growth was strongest for lower-income and minority borrowers....

To help inform the ongoing policy debate concerning the risks associated with second mortgages, the paper rigorously evaluates the effect of second liens on the performance of first mortgages. Using a dataset that combines credit bureau information with mortgage performance data, the statistical...

Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), banks can fulfill their obligation to meet local credit needs either by lending in low-to-moderate-income (LMI) communities or by purchasing loans made by others. This paper evaluates whether CRA credit for purchases has had its intended effect of...

Under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) banks can fulfill their affirmative obligation to meet local credit needs by lending in low-to-moderate-income (LMI) communities or by purchasing loans made by others. This paper evaluates whether giving CRA credit for purchases has had its intended...

This paper sheds light on a poorly understood phenomenon in microfinance which is often referred to as a "mission drift:" A tendency reviewed by numerous microfinance institutions to extend larger average loan sizes in the process of scaling-up. We argue that this phenomenon is not driven by...