How did pricing for mortgage credit risk change during the years prior to the 2008 financial crisis? Using a database from a major American bank that served as trustee for private-label mortgage-backed securitized (PLS) loans, this paper identifies a decline in credit spreads on mortgages...

We use the new market for Credit Risk Transfers (CRTs) and the landfall of two major hurricanes to study both how markets price default risk from natural disasters, and how U.S. mortgage rates would change in absence of government-backed guarantees. First, we exploit that CRTs differ in the...

What impact does immigration have on neighborhood dynamics? Within metropolitan areas, we find that housing values have grown relatively more slowly in neighborhoods of immigrant settlement. We propose three nonexclusive explanations: changes in housing quality, reverse causality, or the...

This paper describes the wealth accumulation of American youth and relates this behavior to their eventual housing choices. We develop a data set that links wealth profiles of youth with constant- quality house prices and tenure choice. A panel data set is compiled for youth age 20-33 for the...

Market share of conforming-size, home purchase mortgage originations has steadily and substantially shifted from banking institutions to nonbank lenders over recent years. In 2017, nonbanks originated more than 1.8 million conventional and FHA purchase mortgages (53% of the market), as compared...

As recent hurricane seasons have made clear, flooding can cause a great deal of property damage and human suffering. Indeed, flooding causes the most damage of any natural disaster in the United States and worldwide and affects the greatest number of people. Yet today most households are...

This paper analyzes the impact of the 1968 Congressional Federal Housing Administration (FHA) amendments on urban areas. The legislation's major impact on population, employment, and the fiscal condition in urban areas is likely to occur through changed neighborhood property values. Some...

On the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act it is imperative to take a critical look at segregation and discrimination in the United States, and the opportunities and challenges associated with making progress on this pressing issue. In that spirit, we released a call for papers focusing on...

This paper provides a conceptual basis for the price discovery potential for tradable market instruments and specifically the development of mortgage securitization in Asia and the potential dangers of such markets. Nonetheless we argue for the potential importance of securitization in Asia...