Search Results
Working Paper
Housing prices and the (in)stability of mortgage prepayment models: evidence from California
Most empirical models of mortgage terminations emphasize refinancing incentives related to interest rate movements. We consider three sources of risk that lead to observed mortgage payment terminations: interest-rate related refinancing, default, and moving. We estimate models that identify the relative importance or regional risk factors leading to termination, using data on mortgage and housing market activity in fifteen California counties from 1992 through 1996. As expected, we find that the time-series dynamics of interest rates and house prices are important determinants of the ...
Journal Article
Effects of welfare reform on Western States
Journal Article
The demise of California reconsidered: interstate migration over the economic cycle
Recent years have witnessed widespread media attention and policy debate regarding the causes and consequences of population flight from California. While some analysts' reports link the reversal in California migration flows to cyclical swings in the state economy, other commentaries focus on alleged deterioration in California amenities and quality of life. This paper employs a logistic migration model to evaluate the role of economic and other location-specific effects in the determination of California domestic migration flows. The model is estimated using data for each of the 50 U.S. ...
Working Paper
Compensating differentials and evolution of the quality-of-life among U.S. states
This paper provides the first application of the compensating differential paradigm to the evaluation of the extent and sources of evolution in quality-of-life among U.S. states. In addition to providing estimates of quality-of-life rankings for U.S. states over the 1981-1990 period, we use estimated implicit prices on place-specific amenities to calculate the contributions of various factors to evolution in the quality-of-life. Our findings indicate that the quality-of-life rankings are relatively stable across model specifications and over time for certain poorly ranked, densely-populated ...
Journal Article
House price differentials and dynamics: evidence from the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas
This paper applies insights from economic theory to explain recent housing price patterns in California's two largest metropolitan areas. We pay particular attention to the role of migration between metropolitan areas in explaining overall housing price dynamics for a given metropolitan area, and we show how household mobility within a metropolitan area tends to attenuate price pressures in the most supply-constrained places. In reviewing various models' ability to explain California's house price patterns, we also provide some historical perspective on California's urban structure, ...
Working Paper
Housing price cycles and prepayment rates of U.S. mortgage pools.
Empirical mortgage prepayment models generally have trouble explaining differences in mortgage prepayment speeds among pools with similar interest rates on the underlying mortgages. In this paper, we model some of the sources of termination heterogeneity across mortgage pools, particularly the role of regional variations in housing prices in generating atypical prepayment speeds. Using a sample of Freddie Mac mortgage pools from 1991-1998, we find evidence that differences in house price dynamics across regions are an important source of between-pool heterogeneity. This finding is then shown ...
Journal Article
California's IPO gold rush
Journal Article
The slowing exodus from California