Search Results
Working Paper
From the horse's mouth: gauging conditional expected stock returns from investor surveys
We use data obtained from a series of Michigan Surveys of Consumer Attitudes to study stock market beliefs and portfolio choices of individual investors. We find that expected returns over the medium- and long-term horizon appear to be extrapolated from past realized returns. The findings also indicate that a more optimistic assessment of macroeconomic conditions coincides with higher expected returns and lower expected volatility, implying strongly procyclical Sharpe ratios. These results are given added credence by the empirical finding that reported portfolio concentrations in equities ...
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 ...
Working Paper
Complex mortgages
Complex mortgages became a popular borrowing instrument during the bullish housing market of the early 2000s but vanished rapidly during the subsequent downturn. These non-traditional loans (interest only, negative amortization, and teaser mortgages) enable households to postpone loan repayment compared to traditional mortgages and hence relax borrowing constraints. At the same time, they increase household leverage and heighten dependence on mortgage refinancing to escape changes in contract terms. We document that complex mortgages were chosen by prime borrowers with high income levels ...
Newsletter
Inequality and Recessions
The increase in inequality over the past several decades has received widespread attention from both academics and the public at large. While much of this discourse centers on either the causes or normative implications of increasing inequality, it is important to ask whether the widening gap between the rich and poor has any direct effects on macroeconomic aggregates and, in particular, on the severity of the Great Recession, when output and consumption dropped precipitously and were slow to recover (see figure 1).
Journal Article
Default rates on prime and subprime mortgages: differences & similarities
For the past several years, the news media have carried countless stories about soaring defaults among subprime mortgage borrowers. Although concern over this segment of the mortgage market is certainly justified, subprime mortgages only account for about onequarter of the total outstanding mortgages in the United States. The remaining 75 percent are prime loans that are made to borrowers with good credit, who fully document their income and make traditional down payments. While default rates on prime loans are significantly lower than those on subprime loans, they are also increasing ...
Journal Article
Economic Perspectives special issue on payments fraud: an introduction
This article provides an overview of this special issue of Economic Perspectives, which presents selected papers based on the proceedings of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's eighth annual Payments Conference, Payments Fraud: Perception Versus Reality, held on June 5?6, 2008.
Journal Article
Transforming payment choices by doubling fees on the Illinois Tollway
Using data from the Illinois Tollway, the authors study the effectiveness of a particular application of pricing incentives, in conjunction with a mass-marketing campaign, to foster adoption of electronic toll collection. Dissecting the consumer response by income level, the authors reveal interesting heterogeneity of consumer payment choice in this environment.
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 ...
Working Paper
How did the 2003 dividend tax cut affect stock prices and corporate payout policy?
We examine the effects of the 2003 dividend tax cut on U.S. stock prices and corporate payout policies. First, using an event-study methodology, we compare the performance of U.S. stocks to that of other securities that should not have benefited from the tax change. We find that U.S. large-cap and small-cap indexes do not outperform their European counterparts, nor REIT stocks, over the event windows, suggesting little if any aggregate stock market effect from the tax change. In cross-sectional analysis, high-dividend stocks outperformed low-dividend stocks by a few percentage points over the ...