*The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or the Federal Reserve System. The current crisis has seen an increase in mortgage default rates unprecedented since the Great Depression. By the end of 2009, one out of 11 mortgages was seriously delinquent or in foreclosure.1 In states that have been y the e...

Although low-income homeownership programs serving vulnerable families at the lower end of income distribution have been focus housing policy in many countries over past 50 years, little is known about post-origination experiences immigrant participating these programs. Notably absent from extant literature are studies examining sustainability among homebuyers and their susceptibility to fallin...

One of our ongoing themes when discussing scientific ethics is the central role of statistics in recognizing and communicating uncertainty. Unfortunately, statistics—and the scientific process more generally—often seems to be used more as a way of laundering uncertainty, processing data until researchers and consumers of research can feel safe acting as if various scientific hypotheses are unqu...

Much has been written in recent years about the changes in corporate strategies and industry structures associated with electronic coordination of market activities. This paper considers the advent of electronic market coordination in the home mortgage industry, focusing on Computerized Lean Origination (CL O) systems. Case studies of five CLOs (First Boston’s Shelternet, PRC’s LoanExpress, Ame...

This paper surveys the diverse effects of consumer credit on household carbon emissions (HCEs) based on consumption patterns revealed by urban Chinese survey data. Based on the foundation of existing literature, consumption patterns and influential factors are carefully chosen to build empirical models that apply Heteroscedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimation and quantile regression...

Mortgage terminations arise because borrowers exercise options. This paper investigates the nonoptimal and apparently irrational behavior of those borrowers who do not terminate their mortgages even when the exercise value of the option is deeply in the money. We develop an option-based empirical model to analyze this phenomenon -the behavior of irrational or boundedly rational “woodheads.” Of ...

This is an interesting paper on a timely topic. As the authors argue, the recent global financial crisis has its roots in increased mortgage delinquencies caused by the bursting of the housing bubble in the United States. By what mechanism does such an increase in mortgage delinquencies affect the rest of the economy? And how should policy react to it? To address these issues, the authors devel...