Using detailed information on lobbying and mortgage lending activities, we find that lenders lobbying more on issues related to mortgage lending (i) had higher loan-to-income ratios, (ii) securitized more intensively, and (iii) had faster growing portfolios. Ex-post, delinquency rates are higher...

This Selected Issues paper for Belgium evaluates whether price increases in Belgium are excessive. It assesses the household and bank balance sheets and their vulnerability to a slowdown in housing prices, and identifies differences in real estate markets between Belgium and other countries. The...

The rapid mortgage credit growth experienced in recent years in mature and emerging countries has raised some stability concerns. Many European credit institutions in mature markets have reacted by increasing securitization, particularly via mortgage covered bonds. From the issuer's perspective,...

House prices in Europe have shown diverging trends, and this paper seeks to explain these differences by analyzing three groups of countries: the "fast lane", the average performers, and the slow movers. Price movements in the first two groups are found to be driven mostly by income and trends...

This paper links the current sub-prime mortgage crisis to a decline in lending standards associated with the rapid expansion of this market. We show that lending standards declined more in areas that experienced larger credit booms and house price increases. We also find that the underlying...

This paper examines access to business finance by Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to housing finance by Canadian households (particularly non-prime borrowers) against the background of a fairly concentrated and protected banking industry. It finds access broadly adequate...

We implement a three-step procedure to assess the extent of exposure to real estate in commercial banks. First, we demonstrate interest rates and income to be the major determinants of delinquency. Then, we adopt a stress testing approach to calculate the impact of any adverse changes in these...

In this note we discuss the findings in Piskorski, Seru, and Vig (2010), as well as the authors' interpretation of their results. First, we find that small changes to the set of covariates used by PSV significantly reduce the magnitude of the differences in foreclosure rates between securitized...

Klyuev (2008) concluded that the Canadian market for housing finance is highly advanced and sophisticated, but financing options were somewhat limited, particularly at terms longer than five years. This paper argues that the paucity of longer-term loans is caused by a five-year maturity cap on...