Search Results
Journal Article
Collateral Damage: House Prices and Consumption During the Great Recession
Did a decline in house prices cause the Great Recession? And if so, how? Credit constraints may be the key to answering those questions
Journal Article
The economics of asset securitization
Ronel Elul explains why asset-backed securities exist and discusses some reasons for their common structure. Elul notes that despite well-developed theories on the what and why of securitization, more research is needed. In particular, additional research could uncover the effect that government regulation and bankruptcy law have on securitization.
Journal Article
The government-sponsored enterprises: past and future
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's role in the housing bubble and financial crisis remains controversial. Did they precipitate or at least worsen the crisis? How do their benefits compare against their losses? Ronel Elul traces their evolution and actions and outlines reform proposals.
Journal Article
Liquidity crises
Financial markets have experienced several episodes of ?liquidity crises? over the past 20 years. One prominent example is the collapse of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund in 1998. The recent market disruption brought about by the downturn in subprime mortgages also shares many features with liquidity crises. What is liquidity? Why does it sometimes seem that the market?s supply of it is insufficient? Can anything be done about it? In ?Liquidity Crises,? Ronel Elul outlines some theories of market liquidity provision, how it breaks down in times of crisis, and some possible ...
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
Concentration in Mortgage Markets: GSE Exposure and Risk-Taking in Uncertain Times
When home prices threaten to decline, lenders bearing more of a community’s mortgage risk have an incentive to combat this decline with new lending that boosts demand. We test whether this incentive drove the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to guarantee riskier mortgages in early 2007, as the chance of substantial declines grew from small to significant. To identify the effect we relate new risky lending to regional variation in the GSEs’ exposure and the interaction of this variation with home-price elasticity. We focus on the GSEs’ discretion across potential purchases by ...
Working Paper
Securitization and mortgage default
We find that private-securitized loans perform worse than observably similar, nonsecuritized loans, which provides evidence for adverse selection. The effect of securitization is strongest for prime mortgages, which have not been studied widely in the previous literature and particular prime adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs): These become delinquent at a 30 percent higher rate when privately securitized. By contrast, our baseline estimates for subprime mortgages show that private-securitized loans default at lower rates. We show, however, that ?early defaulting loans? account for this: those ...
Working Paper
How Big is the Wealth Effect? Decomposing the Response of Consumption to House Prices
We investigate the effect of declining house prices on household consumption behavior during 2006-2009. We use an individual-level dataset that has detailed information on borrower characteristics, mortgages and credit risk. Proxying consumption by individual-level auto loan originations, we decompose the effect of declining house prices on consumption into three main channels: wealth effect, household financial constraints, and bank health. We find a negligible wealth effect. Tightening householdlevel financial constraints can explain 40-45 percent of the response of consumption to declining ...
Working Paper
Securitization and mortgage default
This version is superseded by WP 15-15. The academic literature, the popular press, and policymakers have all debated securitization's contribution to the poor performance of mortgages originated in the run-up to the recent crisis. Theoretical arguments have been advanced on both sides, but the lack of suitable data has made it difficult to assess them empirically. The author examines this issue by using a loan-level data set from LPS Analytics, covering approximately two-thirds of the mortgages originated in 2005 and 2006, and including both securitized and nonsecuritized loans. ; The author ...