Money pit
Regulating Consumer Financial Products: Evidence from Credit Cards
Sumit Agarwal et al.
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We analyze the effectiveness of consumer financial regulation by considering the 2009 Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act. We use a panel data set covering 160 million credit card accounts and a difference-in-differences research design that compares changes in outcomes over time for consumer credit cards, which were subject to the regulations, to changes for small business credit cards, which the law did not cover. We estimate that regulatory limits on credit card fees reduced overall borrowing costs by an annualized 1.6% of average daily balances, with a decline of more than 5.3% for consumers with FICO scores below 660. We find no evidence of an offsetting increase in interest charges or a reduction in the volume of credit. Taken together, we estimate that the CARD Act saved consumers $11.9 billion per year. We also analyze a nudge that disclosed the interest savings from paying off balances in 36 months rather than making minimum payments. We detect a small increase in the share of accounts making the 36-month payment value but no evidence of a change in overall payments.
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Race, Ethnicity and High-Cost Mortgage Lending
Patrick Bayer, Fernando Ferreira & Stephen Ross
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
This paper examines how high cost mortgage lending varies by race and ethnicity. It uses a unique panel data that matches a representative sample of mortgages in seven large metropolitan markets between 2004 and 2008 to public records of housing transactions and proprietary credit reporting data. The results reveal a significantly higher incidence of high costs loans for African-American and Hispanic borrowers even after controlling for key mortgage risk factors: they have a 7.7 and 6.2 percentage point higher likelihood of a high cost loan, respectively, in the home purchase market relative to an overall incidence of 14.8 percent among all home purchase mortgages. Significant racial and ethnic differences are widespread throughout the market - they are present (i) in each metro area, (ii) across high and low risk borrowers, and (iii) regardless of the age of the borrower. These differences are reduced by 60 percent with the inclusion of lender fixed effects, implying that a significant portion of the estimated market-wide racial differences can be attributed to differential access to (or sorting across) mortgage lenders.
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Political capital and moral hazard
Leonard Kostovetsky & William Simon
Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines how political connections affect risk exposure of financial institutions. Using a geography-based measure, I find that politically connected firms have higher leverage and their stocks have higher volatility and beta. Furthermore, prior to the 2008 financial crisis, politically-connected financial firms had higher leverage and were more likely to increase their leverage during the housing bubble in response to local growth in median housing prices. During the crisis, higher leverage was associated with worse performance but being in a state with a US Senator on the Banking Committee was correlated with weakly improved stock returns and reduced bankruptcy probability, highlighting the value of political connections for financial firms.
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Has the Fed Improved U.S. Economic Performance?
Thomas Hogan
Journal of Macroeconomics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper finds that U.S. economic performance has not generally improved under the Federal Reserve, with the possible exception of the Great Moderation. We analyze the Fed and pre-Fed periods in terms of the rates and volatilities of inflation and real GDP growth. Comparing the pre-Fed periods to the post-World War II period and the Great Moderation, we find that real GDP growth has been lower under the Fed, while inflation has been higher. The volatilities of inflation and GDP growth have both declined under the Fed, but the reductions occurred mostly during the Great Moderation.
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House Prices, Local Demand, and Retail Prices
Johannes Stroebel & Joseph Vavra
NBER Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
We use detailed micro data to document a causal response of local retail prices to changes in house prices, with elasticities of 15%-20% across housing booms and busts. We provide evidence that our results are driven by changes in markups rather than by changes in local costs. We argue that this markup variation arises when increases in housing wealth reduce households' demand elasticity, and firms raise markups in response. Consistent with this wealth channel, price effects are larger in zip codes with many homeowners, and non-existent in zip codes with mostly renters. In addition, shopping data confirms that house price changes have opposite effects on the price sensitivity of homeowners and renters. Our evidence has implications for monetary, labor and urban economics, and suggests a new source of markup variation in business cycle models.
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The Industrial Organization of the US Residential Mortgage Market
Richard Stanton, Johan Walden & Nancy Wallace
Annual Review of Financial Economics, 2014, Pages 259-288
Abstract:
We show that the US residential single-family mortgage-origination market is highly concentrated once account is taken of the contractual coordination that arises from the correspondent- and warehouse-funding channels. We represent these channels as a network, using the flow of loans through three strata of the loan origination market: origination, aggregation, and securitization. We develop a network representation of the origination market and demonstrate that it is a small world, in that most nodes are close in the network. We then rank-order the interlinked aggregators and securitizers using ex post mortgage foreclosure rates as a proxy for performance. Our findings suggest that these significant interlinkages in the mortgage-origination network represent a previously underappreciated source of systemic risk. Many apparently atomistic mortgage underwriters are, in fact, coordinated to act in parallel because of their funding relationships with the large, too-big-to-fail bank holding companies.
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Size Anomalies in U.S. Bank Stock Returns
Priyank Gandhi & Hanno Lustig
Journal of Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
The largest commercial bank stocks, ranked by total size of the balance sheet, have significantly lower risk-adjusted returns than small- and medium-sized bank stocks, even though large banks are significantly more levered. We uncover a size factor in the component of bank returns that is orthogonal to the standard risk factors, including small-minus-big, which has the right covariance with bank returns to explain the average risk-adjusted returns. This factor measures size-dependent exposure to bank-specific tail risk. These findings are consistent with government guarantees that protect shareholders of large banks, but not small banks, in disaster states.
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Michael Greenstone, Alexandre Mas & Hoai-Luu Nguyen
NBER Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
We estimate the effect of the reduction in credit supply that followed the 2008 financial crisis on the real economy. We predict county lending shocks using variation in pre-crisis bank market shares and estimated bank supply-shifts. Counties with negative predicted shocks experienced declines in small business loan originations, indicating that it is costly for these businesses to find new lenders. Using confidential microdata from the Longitudinal Business Database, we find that the 2007-2009 lending shocks accounted for statistically significant, but economically small, declines in both small firm and overall employment. Predicted lending shocks affected lending but not employment from 1997-2007.
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The Domestic and International Effects of Interstate U.S. Banking
Matteo Cacciatore, Fabio Ghironi & Viktors Stebunovs
Journal of International Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies the domestic and international effects of national bank market integration in a two-country, dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium model with endogenous producer entry. Integration of banking across localities reduces the degree of local monopoly power of financial intermediaries. The economy that implements this form of deregulation experiences increased producer entry, real exchange rate appreciation, and a current account deficit. The foreign economy experiences a long-run increase in GDP and consumption. Less monopoly power in financial intermediation results in less volatile business creation, reduced markup countercyclicality, and weaker substitution effects in labor supply in response to productivity shocks. Bank market integration thus contributes to moderation of firm-level and aggregate output volatility. In turn, trade and financial ties allow also the foreign economy to enjoy lower GDP volatility in most scenarios we consider. These results are consistent with features of U.S. and international fluctuations after the United States began its transition to interstate banking in the late 1970s.
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Effects of Monitoring on Mortgage Delinquency: Evidence From a Randomized Field Study
Stephanie Moulton et al.
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Winter 2015, Pages 184-207
Abstract:
In the wake of the housing crisis in 2008, U.S. policymakers have developed a range of policy proposals to address the risk of mortgage borrowers going into payment default. Some of these proposed regulations would effectively eliminate certain loans with riskier borrower characteristics from the market. Such prescriptive approaches fail to recognize alternatives that permit riskier loans to be made, but require postorigination practices designed to offset elevated default risk by improving the capability of individual borrowers to make timely payments. This study provides evidence of one such approach. Through a randomized field experiment, we test the impact of goal setting and external monitoring on mortgage delinquency. First-time homebuyers who completed a financial planning module and received quarterly contact from a financial coach are less likely to become delinquent or default on their mortgages. These results suggest that relatively low cost procedures embedded into loan servicing may increase adherence to timely repayments, thereby reducing the probability of delinquency while still permitting riskier borrowers to participate in credit markets.
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Liangliang Jiang, Ross Levine & Chen Lin
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
Did regulatory reforms that lowered barriers to competition among U.S. banks increase or decrease the quality of information that banks disclose to the public and regulators? We find that an intensification of competition reduced abnormal accruals of loan loss provisions and the frequency with which banks restate financial statements. The results indicate that competition reduces bank opacity, enhancing the ability of markets and regulators to monitor banks.
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Charis Kubrin & John Hipp
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the aftermath of one of the worst recessions in US history, high unemployment has placed millions of Americans in precarious financial positions. More than ever, Americans are opting out of traditional financial services, relying instead on "fringe lenders" such as check cashers, payday lenders, and pawnshops to manage their finances. Given their tremendous growth and the concern that consumers who are least able to pay for high-cost, high-risk financial products are most likely to use them, fringe lenders have been the subject of controversy and the focus of much research. Largely unknown, however, are the effects of fringe lenders on the communities where they are located. Given their spatial concentration in low-income neighborhoods with greater concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities - areas with typically more crime - of concern is whether fringe lenders themselves are criminogenic. We consider this by examining the impact of several types of fringe lenders on neighborhood crime rates in Los Angeles. Our findings reveal that the presence of fringe banks on a block is related to higher crime levels, even after controlling for a range of factors known to be associated with crime rates. The presence of a fringe bank also impacts crime, particularly robbery, on adjacent blocks. Whereas we find that pawnshops have little impact on crime levels, payday lenders and check cashers have a much stronger impact. Finally, we discover there are moderating effects, as the fringe lender-crime relationship is considerably reduced if the lender is located in a higher population density area.
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Access to Refinancing and Mortgage Interest Rates: HARPing on the Importance of Competition
Gene Amromin & Caitlin Kearns
Federal Reserve Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
We explore a policy-induced change in borrower ability to shop for mortgages to investigate whether market competitiveness affects mortgage interest rates. Our paper exploits a discontinuity in the competitive landscape introduced by the Home Affordable Refinancing Program (HARP). Under HARP, lenders that currently service loans eligible for refinancing enjoyed substantial advantages over their potential competitors. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we show a jump in mortgage interest rates precisely at the HARP eligibility threshold. Our results suggest that limiting competition raised interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages by 15 to 20 basis points, translating into higher lender profits. The results are distinct from documented effects of consolidation and capacity reduction in mortgage lending and are robust to a number of sample restrictions and estimation choices. We interpret our findings as evidence that increases in pricing power lead to higher interest rates in mortgage markets.
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Bankruptcy Exemption, Home Equity and Mortgage Credit
Qianqian Cao
Real Estate Economics, Winter 2014, Pages 938-976
Abstract:
This article examines the impact of state bankruptcy homestead exemptions on mortgage application outcomes. The empirical analysis controls for endogeneity problems by focusing on 55 urban areas that cross state borders using the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act files from 2001 to 2008. The results indicate that holding the loan-to-value ratio constant, a more generous homestead exemption encourages borrowers to buy more housing and take out larger mortgages. However, holding house value constant, a more generous homestead exemption discourages mortgage borrowing and results in more home equity. Moreover, benefits of the homestead exemption outweigh the costs of it to mortgage lenders.
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Does the Geographic Expansion of Bank Assets Reduce Risk?
Martin Goetz, Luc Laeven & Ross Levine
NBER Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
We develop a new identification strategy to evaluate the impact of the geographic expansion of bank holding company (BHC) assets across U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) on BHC risk. We find that the geographic expansion of bank assets reduces risk. Moreover, geographic expansion reduces risk more when BHCs expand into economically dissimilar MSAs, i.e., MSAs with different industrial structures and business cycles. We do not find that geographic diversification improves loan quality. Our results are consistent with arguments that geographic expansion lowers risk by reducing exposure to idiosyncratic local risks and inconsistent with arguments that geographic expansion, on net, increases risk by reducing the ability of BHCs to monitor loans and manage risks.
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Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers
Shawn Cole, Martin Kanz & Leora Klapper
Journal of Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
We conduct an experiment with commercial bank loan officers to test how performance compensation affects risk assessment and lending. High-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable lending decisions. This effect is muted, however, by deferred compensation and limited liability, two standard features of loan officer compensation contracts. We find that career concerns and personality traits affect loan officer behavior, but show that the response to incentives does not vary with traits such as risk-aversion, optimism, or overconfidence. Finally, we present evidence that incentives distort the assessment of credit risk, even among professionals with many years of experience.