The incidence of taking a mortgage loan from a commercial bank or cooperative for home purchase is sharply lower in developing than industrialized countries. Indeed, the common approach for achieving good quality housing is for a family to construct and improve a dwelling over a number of years....

Using the National Survey of Mortgage Originations, we document that borrowers who are more financially sophisticated (measured by their self-reported understanding of the mortgage process) and more exposed to competition (measured by the number of lenders they considered) pay lower mortgage...

We test for pricing disparities in mortgage contracts using a novel dataset that allows us to observe the race and ethnicity of both parties to the loan. We find that minorities pay between three and five percent more in fees than similarly qualified whites when obtaining a loan through the same...

Using loan-level mortgage data merged with consumer credit records, we examine the ability of the government to impact mortgage refinancing activity and spur consumption by focusing on the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). The policy relaxed housing equity constraints by extending...

This appendix contains six sections. The first section compares our sample to the broader subprime mortgage market. The second section describes our algorithm for inferring broker race and ethnicity. The third section considers rejection and funding uncertainty as potential explanations for...

Extensive research has confirmed that there is significant anchoring bias in purchase mortgage appraisals, with appraisers setting the value at or above the contract price the vast majority of the time. However, understanding appraisal bias in refinance mortgages has been significantly more...

We show how price leadership bans, imposed as part of the European Commission's State aid control on all main mortgage providers except the largest bank, shifted the Dutch mortgage market from a competitive to a collusive price leadership equilibrium. In May 2009, mortgage rates in the...

We show how price leadership bans, imposed as part of the European Commission's State aid control on all main mortgage providers except the largest bank, shifted the Dutch mortgage market from a competitive to a collusive price leadership equilibrium. In May 2009, mortgage rates in the...

I exploit exogenous variation in the probability that a mortgage is exposed to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac generated by property appraisals to examine how well buyers of high-priced homes balance loan size and loan cost. I find that they generally strike a proper balance despite wide variation in...

This special feature studies the risks posed by the rapid rise in property developer debt in several Asian economies in recent years. Gradually, the firms involved are shifting away from traditional bank loans and choosing to issue debt securities, often in foreign currency. So far indebtedness...