Search Results
Working Paper
The role of warrants in corporate reorganizations
An argument that informational asymmetries explain why the original shareholders of some firms emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings with stock in the reorganized company, while others receive warrants. By proposing a reorganization plan in which they receive warrants, the original stockholders of a firm with good future prospects can signal their superior information to the creditors in a way that firms with poor prospects will not wish to mimic.
Journal Article
Beneath the rhetoric: clarifying the debate on mortgage lending discrimination
The authors' simple model of the mortgage underwriting process provides a framework within which to define discrimination and various notions of the default rate. By providing those with differing views a common framework for discussing their positions, the model clarifies and reconciles some of the most controversial issues in the debate over mortgage discrimination. It also shows how this theoretical framework can help in the design of practical policy responses to this vexing social problem.
Journal Article
Rooting out discrimination in home mortgage lending
An argument that racial discrimination in the home mortgage market arises not only from bigotry, but from statistical discrimination (wherein race is correlated with some hard-to-measure determinants of creditworthiness) and from a lack of cultural affinity between lenders and minorities. The author argues that each of these causes may require a different remedy.
Working Paper
The importance of bank seniority for relationship lending
The authors examine two aspects of a bank's interaction with its borrowers--the relative priority of bank debt and the role of banks as "relationship lenders." They show that making the bank senior improves its incentives to build a relationship with the firm, thereby fulfilling an important function of intermediated debt.
Journal Article
Mortgage scoring and the myth of overrides
While many perceive a dark side to the use of overrides in the mortgage underwriting process, Stanley Longhofer of Wichita State University disagrees. This article concludes the five-part series on credit scoring and fair mortgage lending.
Journal Article
Discrimination in mortgage lending: what have we learned?
A retrospective on the debate over the presence of discrimination in the residential mortgage market, examining some of the evidence that's been gathered since the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston published its 1992 study concluding that minority applicants were over 50 percent more likely to be denied a loan than whites.
Journal Article
Absolute priority rule violations in bankruptcy
An examination of the impact of APR violations, demonstrating that the efficiency of such violations depends on the specific contracting problem with which a firm and its creditors are faced, and that as a result, an optimal bankruptcy institution should allow contract participants to decide ex ante whether such violations will occur.
Working Paper
Bankruptcy rules and debt contracting: on the relative efficiency of absolute priority, proportionate priority, and first-come, first-served rules
An analysis showing that allowing creditors to "run" on a firm in financial distress is socially valuable, since it compensates them for monitoring the firm's condition; in contrast, strict adherence to absolute and proportionate priority rules allows lenders to free ride on the monitoring efforts of others, exacerbating the firm's moral hazard problem.
Journal Article
Mortgage brokers and fair lending
Mortgage brokers play an important role in the housing finance market, but they also present unique challenges to regulators attempting to enforce fair lending laws. Should lenders be held responsible for the pricing decisions of brokers from whom they receive loan applications, or should fair lending laws instead be applied directly to the brokers themselves?