This paper studies a largely overlooked and important segment of the mortgage market in explaining the recent financial crisis—the condominium loan market, which experienced a 15fold increase in origination and constituted 15% of the overall residential loan originations from 2001 to 2007. Condominium loan defaults grow at a faster rate than single family (including subprime) loan defaults. Con...

Banks face a tradeoff between diversifying and focusing their loan portfolio. In this paper we carry out an empirical study for the German market to shed light on the question whether or not the benefits of risk sharing outweigh those of specialization. We use data from the Bundesbank’s quarterly borrowers statistic to determine the degree of diversification in the banks’ loan portfolios and co...

We study the effects of usury limits on the market for auto loans and find little evidence of credit rationing. We show instead that loan contracting and the organization of the loan market adjust to facilitate loans to risky borrowers. When usury restrictions bind, auto dealers finance their customers’ purchases and raise the vehicle sales price (and loan amount) relative to the value of the u...

Using 2005 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, this study explores problematic mortgage application behaviors including submitting incomplete paperwork when seeking a mortgage, withdrawing a loan application before the lender makes a credit decision, rejecting a lender approved loan offer and accepting a high interest rate loan. Tract-level college completion rates, homeownership rates, and hous...

This paper examines the information content of loan announcements using an event study methodology. I differentiate between loan announcements according to the type of lending institution. The empirical results suggest that the information released by bank loans announcements are greater than loans announced by other lenders. Furthermore, the market response is greatest when the borrower firm h...

We propose a heteroscedastic regression model to identify the determinants of the dispersion in interest rates on loans granted to small and medium sized enterprises. We interpret unexplained deviations as evidence of the banks’ discretionary use of market power in the loan rate setting process. “Discretion” in the loan-pricing process is most important, we find, if: (i) loans are small and unc...

Iranian banking network policymakers are focused on bank consolidation as one of the reform policies in recent years. But before merging banks, it is necessary to examine their effects. Loans are one crucial item in the bankschr('39') balance sheets that are affected by bank consolidation. In the Iranian banking network, loans are offered to various economic sectors. What is important for banki...

We propose a fast algorithm for computing the expected tranche loss in the Gaussian factor model with arbitrary accuracy using Hermite expansions. No assumptions about homogeneity of the portfolio are made. The algorithm is a generalization of the algorithm proposed in [4]. The advantage of the new algorithm is that it allows us to achieve higher accuracy in almost the same computational time. ...