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Working Paper
The role of securitization in mortgage renegotiation
We study the effects of securitization on renegotiation of distressed residential mortgages over the current financial crisis. Unlike prior studies, we employ unique data that directly observe lender renegotiation actions and cover more than 60% of the U.S. mortgage market. Exploiting within-servicer variation in these data, we find that bank-held loans are 26% to 36% more likely to be renegotiated than comparable securitized mortgages (4.2 to 5.7% in absolute terms). Also, modifications of bank-held loans are more efficient: conditional on a modification, bank-held loans have lower ...
Journal Article
Determinants of automobile loan default and prepayment
The authors examine whether a borrower?s choice of automobile reveals information about future loan performance. They find that loans on most luxury automobiles have a higher probability of prepayment, while loans on most economy automobiles have a lower probability of default, even when holding traditional risk factors, such as income and credit score, constant.
Working Paper
Market-based loss mitigation practices for troubled mortgages following the financial crisis
The meltdown in residential real-estate prices that commenced in 2006 resulted in unprecedented mortgage delinquency rates. Until mid-2009, lenders and servicers pursued their own individual loss mitigation practices without being significantly influenced by government intervention. Using a unique dataset that precisely identifies loss mitigation actions, we study these methods?liquidation, repayment plans, loan modification, and refinancing?and analyze their effectiveness. We show that the majority of delinquent mortgages do not enter any loss mitigation program or become a part of ...
Journal Article
How do private firms use credit lines?
The authors find that firms that face higher upfront commitment fees, risk premium spreads or usage fees have smaller credit lines, while those with higher overdraft fees have larger ones. Firms with greater profit growth in the past have larger credit lines, while those with more internal funds or higher volatility in profit growth have smaller credit lines. The results for line utilization are quite similar.
Working Paper
Bankruptcy exemptions, credit history, and the mortgage market.
We develop and test a model of mortgage underwriting, with particular reference to the role of credit bureau scores. In our model scores are used in a standardized fashion, which reflects the prevalence of automated underwriting in industry practice. We show that our model has implications for the debate on the effect of personal bankruptcy exemptions on secured lending. Recent literature (Berkowitz and Hynes (1999), Lin and White (2001)) has developed conflicting theories?and found conflicting results?seeking to explain how exemptions affect the mortgage market. ; By contrast, our model ...
Working Paper
Policy Intervention in Debt Renegotiation: Evidence from the Home Affordable Modification Program
The main rationale for policy intervention in debt renegotiation is to enhance such activity when foreclosures are perceived to be inefficiently high. We examine the ability of the government to influence debt renegotiation by empirically evaluating the effects of the 2009 Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) that provided intermediaries (servicers) with sizeable financial incentives to renegotiate mortgages. A difference-in-difference strategy that exploits variation in program eligibility criteria reveals that the program generated an overall increase in the intensity of ...
Working Paper
Do consumers choose the right credit contracts?
A number of studies have pointed to various mistakes that consumers might make in their consumption-saving and financial decisions. We utilize a unique market experiment conducted by a large U.S. bank to assess how systematic and costly such mistakes are in practice. The bank offered consumers a choice between two credit card contracts, one with an annual fee but a lower interest rate and one with no annual fee but a higher interest rate. To minimize their total interest costs net of the fee, consumers expecting to borrow a sufficiently large amount should choose the contract with the fee, ...
Working Paper
What \"triggers\" mortgage default?
This paper assesses the relative importance of two key drivers of mortgage default: negative equity and illiquidity. To do so, the authors combine loan-level mortgage data with detailed credit bureau information about the borrower's broader balance sheet. This gives them a direct way to measure illiquid borrowers: those with high credit card utilization rates. The authors find that both negative equity and illiquidity are significantly associated with mortgage default, with comparably sized marginal effects. Moreover, these two factors interact with each other: The effect of illiquidity on ...
Working Paper
Loan commitments and private firms
Bank lending is an important source of funding for firms. Most loans are in the form of credit lines. Empirical studies of line demand have been complicated by their use of data on publicly traded firms, which have a wide menu of financing options. We avoid this problem by using a unique proprietary data set from a large financial institution of loan commitments made to 712 privately-held firms. We test Martin and Santomero's (1997) model, in which lines give firms the speed and flexibility to pursue investment opportunities. Our findings are consistent with their predictions. Firms facing ...