Real estate agents play an important intermediary role in housing markets. We use a merged transaction dataset that identifies houses purchased by registered real estate agents (salespersons) and other buyers in Singapore to empirically test the hypothesis that real estate agents use information...

Using a unique dataset that merges bankruptcy and motor events with personal data in Singapore, this study finds significant evidence of gender gap in personal bankruptcy risk. We show that the women' odds in bankruptcy events is 28% of the men's odds controlling for demographic, housing types...

Using a representative sample of credit card holders from a Chinese commercial bank with a 10% credit card market share, we investigate how consumers respond to an unexpected interest rate decrease that automatically reduces interest expenses for all mortgagors in the country and thereby...

This paper studies the incentive costs of housing booms. We use the type and actual time stamps of 9.3 million credit card transactions by over 200,000 cardholders from a large commercial bank to detect non-work-related behavior during work hours. After positive shocks to house prices, employees...

The recent financial crisis has led to calls for a better understanding of the reasons behind the increase in mortgage defaults and the foreclosures that followed. Previous studies using option-based mortgage default models predicted that borrowers should immediately exercise the default option...

For most people, buying a home is their single largest financial commitment. Previous research shows that Chinese buyers pay less for homes with unlucky addresses and more for homes with lucky addresses. Using Singapore data on housing transactions combined with a plethora of individual buyer...

This paper investigates the role of ethnic matching between buyers and sellers in housing markets. Using unique public housing datasets in Singapore, we find that sellers sell homes in blocks with a high concentration of their own (other) ethnic group at significant premiums (discounts). Chinese...

This paper explores the different pricing strategies of lenders who originate both government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) and non-GSE loans. We find that, conditional on loan and borrower characteristics and some observable local economic factors, mortgage rates on GSE loans vary significantly...

This paper investigates whether different types of institutionshave discernible trading motives in response to portfoliodisclosures. Results show that banks, life insurance companies,mutual funds, and investment advisors who act as external managers generally have similar trading strategies....

We develop a bond pair approach to study (1) the shapes (slope and curvature) of individual spread curves, and (2) the relationship among spread curves for bonds with different ratings. We uncover downward sloping spread curves for triple C and double C bonds and upward sloping spread curves for...