’ moral intuitions about strategic default on a mortgage contract. The central premise of this paper is that when homeowners … entities than with local, identifiable parties. In the world of the mortgage contract, people are less averse to default when … are more willing to breach contracts that contemplate and specify the consequences of breach within the contract itself …

% of the U.S. mortgage market. Exploiting within-servicer variation in these data, we find that bank-held loans are 26% to …

The meltdown in residential real-estate prices that commenced in 2006 resulted in unprecedented mortgage delinquency … following modifications. While modification terms are more favorable for weaker borrowers, greater reductions in mortgage … point decline in mortgage interest rate is associated with a nearly 4 percentage point decline in default probability. This …