Federal and state regulators are currently considering the imposition of capital requirements and other prudential rules on various classes of non-bank financial institutions, including insurers and mortgage servicers. This report examines some of the issues involving non-bank financial...

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...

Many observers have argued that the fall in RMBS prices during the crisis was partly caused by fire sales. We provide an explanation for why financial institutions may have engaged in fire sales using a unique dataset of RMBS transactions for insurance companies. We show that risk-sensitive...

We study how banks react to policy announcements during the representative policy cycle of consultation and policy publication. We use unique data covering the population of all mortgage transactions in the UK complemented with regulatory risk assessments of banks and their supervisory...

The application, or to be more precise, the misapplication of securitization in the mortgage market had fatal consequences for the financial sector worldwide. More over securitization techniques enabled single banks to reduce their individual risk while at the same time transferred greater risk...

We study the effect of changes to bank-specific capital requirements on mortgage loan supply with a new loan-level dataset containing all mortgages issued in the UK between 2005Q2 and 2007Q2. We find that a rise of a 100 basis points in capital requirements leads to a 5.4% decline in individual...

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...

We study the effect of changes to bank-specific capital requirements on mortgage loan supply with a new loan-level data set containing all mortgages issued in the United Kingdom between 2005 Q2 and 2007 Q2. We find that a rise of a 100 basis points in capital requirements leads to a 5.4% decline...

This paper examines mortgage credit markets and the need for government intervention to protect and advance the public interest. We identify as rationales for the public interest: positive and negative externalities, the promotion of equal access, and information asymmetry and principal agent...