Bankable
Long-Term Growth in Housing Prices and Stock Returns
Henock Louis & Amy Sun
Real Estate Economics, Fall 2013, Pages 663–708
Abstract:
A firm's long-term stock returns are negatively related to past growth in housing prices in the state where the firm is located. The housing price effect is persistent and robust to controlling for the long-term stock return reversal effect, changes in mortgage interest rates across the states, cyclicality in housing prices and overall local economic conditions. There is no evidence that extant asset pricing models can adequately explain the effect. The study discusses potential explanations for, and the implications of, the cross-regional housing price effect.
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Strategic Behavior of Federal Open Market Committee Board Members: Evidence from Members’ Forecasts
Yoshiyuki Nakazono
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, September 2013, Pages 62–70
Abstract:
In this paper, we use panel data to test whether Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) board members’ forecasts are rational. Rationality is rejected in the sense that forecasts by members are heavily dependent on previous own forecasts and last consensus made in FOMC. Furthermore, we reveal the strategic behavior of FOMC board members. Forecasts by governors, who always have voting rights, agree much with the previous consensus of FOMC members’ forecasts. In contrast, non-governors, who rotate voting rights, exaggerate their forecasts: they aggressively deviate their forecasts from previous consensus. The former is herding behavior and the latter is anti-herding behavior. Our results imply that individual members behave strategically; governors want to present policy-consistent forecasts to the Congress and non-governors utilize their forecasts to influence decision making in FOMC.
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Why Don't Lenders Renegotiate More Home Mortgages? Redefaults, Self-Cures and Securitization
Manuel Adelino, Kristopher Gerardi & Paul Willen
Journal of Monetary Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
A leading explanation for the lack of widespread mortgage renegotiation is the existence of frictions in the mortgage securitization process. This paper finds similarly small renegotiation rates for securitized loans and loans held on banks' balance sheets that become seriously delinquent, in particular during the early part of the financial crisis. We argue that information issues endemic to home mortgages, where lenders negotiate with large numbers of borrowers, lead to barriers in renegotiation. Consistent with the theory, renegotiation rates are strongly negatively correlated with the degree of informational asymmetries between borrowers and lenders over the course of the crisis.
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Chris Cunningham & Robert Reed
Regional Science and Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the relationship between housing equity and wage earnings using nine waves of the national American Housing Survey from 1985-2003. Employing a rich set of time and place controls, a synthetic mortgage instrumental variable strategy, and a first difference estimator we find that people underwater on their mortgage command a significantly lower wage than other homeowners. The finding survives a number of robustness checks for reverse causality and unobserved heterogeneity. We also explore other determinants of “house lock” including loss aversion, a low existing mortgage interest rate and property tax assessment caps, but do not find these factors mitigate the effect of negative equity on wages.
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TARP Funds Distribution and Bank Loan Supply
Lei Li
Journal of Banking & Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates the determinants of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds distribution to banks and the stimulus effect of TARP investments on credit supply in the economy. Using banks’ political and regulatory connections as instruments, this paper finds that TARP investments increased bank loan supply by an annualized rate of 6.36% for banks with below median Tier 1 capital ratios. This increase is found in all major types of loans and can be translated into $404 billion of additional loans for all TARP banks. On average, TARP banks employed about one-third of their TARP capital to support new loans and kept the rest to strengthen their balance sheets. Furthermore, there is little evidence that loans made by TARP banks had lower quality than those by non-TARP banks. In sum, this paper shows a positive stimulus effect of TARP on credit supply during the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
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Exporting Liquidity: Branch Banking and Financial Integration
Erik Gilje, Elena Loutskina & Philip Strahan
NBER Working Paper, September 2013
Abstract:
Using exogenous deposit windfalls from oil and natural gas shale discoveries, we demonstrate that bank branch networks help integrate U.S. lending markets. We find that banks exposed to shale booms increase their mortgage lending in non-boom counties by 0.93% per 1% increase in deposits. This effect is present only in markets where banks have branches and is strongest for mortgages that are hard to securitize. Our findings suggest that contracting frictions limit the ability of arm’s length finance to integrate credit markets fully. Branch networks continue to play an important role in financial integration, despite the development of securitization markets.
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Global Imbalances and Structural Change in the United States
Timothy Kehoe, Kim Ruhl & Joseph Steinberg
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Since the early 1990s, as the United States has borrowed from the rest of the world, employment in U.S. goods-producing sectors has fallen. Using a dynamic general equilibrium model, we find that rapid productivity growth in goods production, not U.S. borrowing, has been the most important driver of the decline in goods-sector employment. As the United States repays its debt, its trade balance will reverse, but goods-sector employment will continue to fall. A sudden stop in foreign lending in 2015–2016 would cause a sharp trade balance reversal and painful reallocation across sectors, but would not affect long-term structural change.
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Factoryless Goods Producers in the US
Andrew Bernard & Teresa Fort
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
This paper documents the extent and characteristics of plants and firms in the US that are outside the manufacturing sector according to official government statistics but nonetheless are heavily involved in activities related to the production of manufactured goods. Using new data on establishment activities in the Census of Wholesale Trade conducted by the US Bureau of the Census in 2002 and 2007, this paper provides evidence on so-called “factoryless goods producers” (FGPs) in the US economy. FGPs are formally in the wholesale sector but, unlike traditional wholesale establishments, FGPs design the goods they sell and coordinate the production activities. This paper documents the extent of FGPs in the wholesale sector and how they differ from traditional wholesalers in terms of their employment, wages, productivity and output. Reclassifying FGP establishments to the manufacturing sector using our definition would have shifted at least 595,000 workers to as many as 1,311,000 workers from wholesale to manufacturing sectors in 2002 and at least 431,000 workers to as many as 1,934,000 workers in 2007.
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Income Increases Do not Compensate for Perceived Inflation, A Price-Consumption Anomaly
Tommy Gärling, Amelie Gamble & Fabian Christandl
Journal of Socio-Economics, December 2013, Pages 11–15
Abstract:
We conjecture that lay people extrapolate past inflation, evaluate product prices relative to recalled reference prices, and perceive income increases as opportunities to increase consumption. From these conjectures we derive the hypothesis that past inflation makes products or expenditures appear more expensive, whereas income increases make them more affordable but not less expensive. In Experiment 1 205 undergraduates were in different conditions asked to imagine that they received no income increase, a 10% income increase, or that past inflation was 5%, 10% or 30%. In line with the hypothesis, expensiveness of common products and expenditures was rated higher for the higher inflation rates but not lower for the income increase. In Experiment 2 114 undergraduates imagined that they would receive a 10% income decrease or increase and that past inflation was 5% or 15%. Also in line with the hypothesis, ratings of expensiveness of the products and expenditures increased with increased inflation but did not vary with income, whereas ratings of affordability of the products and expenditures increased more with an income increase than a decrease but did not vary with inflation.
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The Network Origins of Large Economic Downturns
Daron Acemoglu, Asuman Ozdaglar & Alireza Tahbaz-Salehi
NBER Working Paper, July 2013
Abstract:
This paper shows that large economic downturns may result from the propagation of microeconomic shocks over the input-output linkages across different firms or sectors within the economy. Building on the framework of Acemoglu et al. (2012), we argue that the economy’s input-output structure can fundamentally reshape the distribution of aggregate output, increasing the likelihood of large downturns from infinitesimal to substantial. More specifically, we show that an economy with non-trivial intersectoral input-output linkages that is subject to thin-tailed productivity shocks may exhibit deep recessions as frequently as economies that are subject to heavy-tailed shocks. Moreover, we show that in the presence of input-output linkages, aggregate volatility is not necessarily a sufficient statistic for the likelihood of large downturns. Rather, depending on the shape of the distribution of the idiosyncratic shocks, different features of the economy’s input-output network may be of first-order importance. Finally, our results establish that the effects of the economy’s input-output structure and the nature of the idiosyncratic firm-level shocks on aggregate output are not separable, in the sense that the likelihood of large economic downturns is determined by the interplay between the two.
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Justin Yiqiang Jin, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam & Gerald Lobo
Journal of Banking & Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the unintended consequences of the 2005 increase from $500 million to $1 billion in the asset threshold for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA) internal control reporting requirements. We focus on a test sample of banks that increased their total assets from between $100 million and $500 million prior to the change in regulation to between $500 million and $1 billion within two years following the change. These “affected” banks are no longer subject to the internal control requirements but would have been had the regulation not been changed. We hypothesize that these affected banks are likely to make riskier loans, which will increase the likelihood of failure during the crisis period. We find evidence consistent with this hypothesis. Affected banks have higher likelihood of failure during the crisis period than banks from two different control samples. We also find that auditor reputation (i.e., whether the bank is audited by a Big 4 auditor or an industry specialist auditor) has a moderating effect on the likelihood of failure for these affected banks.
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Frank Fossen
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
A personal bankruptcy law that allows for a “fresh start” not only reduces the individual risk involved in entrepreneurship, but may also lead to higher interest rates charged by creditors. Both effects are less relevant for wealthy potential entrepreneurs. This paper illustrates these effects in a model and tests the hypotheses derived by exploiting the introduction of a “fresh start” policy in Germany in 1999 as a quasi-experiment, based on representative household panel data. The results indicate that the insurance effect of a more forgiving personal bankruptcy law exceeds the interest effect and encourages less wealthy individuals to enter into entrepreneurship.
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Payment Size, Negative Equity, and Mortgage Default
Andreas Fuster & Paul Willen
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Surprisingly little is known about the importance of mortgage payment size for default, as efforts to measure the treatment effect of rate increases or loan modifications are confounded by borrower selection. We study a sample of hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages that have experienced large rate reductions over the past years and are largely immune to these selection concerns. We show that interest rate reductions dramatically affect repayment behavior, even for borrowers who are significantly underwater on their mortgages. Our estimates imply that cutting a borrower’s payment in half reduces his hazard of becoming delinquent by about 55 percent, an effect approximately equivalent to lowering the borrower’s combined loan-to-value ratio from 145 to 95 (holding the payment fixed). These findings shed light on the driving forces behind default behavior and have important implications for public policy.
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Leverage and the Foreclosure Crisis
Dean Corbae & Erwan Quintin
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
How much of the recent rise in foreclosures can be explained by the large number of high-leverage mortgage contracts originated during the housing boom? We present a model where heterogeneous households select from a set of mortgage contracts and choose whether to default on their payments given realizations of income and housing price shocks. The set of mortgage contracts consists of loans with high downpayments and loans with low downpayments. We run an experiment where the use of low downpayment loans is initially limited by payment-to-income requirements but then becomes unrestricted for 8 years. The relaxation of approval standards causes homeownership rates, high-leverage originations and the frequency of high interest rate loans to rise much like they did in the US between 1998-2006. When home values fall by the magnitude observed in the US from 2007-08, default rates increase by over 180% as they do in the data. Two distinct counterfactual experiments where approval standards remain the same throughout suggest that the increased availability of high-leverage loans prior to the crisis can explain between 40% to 65% of the initial rise in foreclosure rates. Furthermore, we run policy experiments which suggest that recourse could have had significant dampening effects during the crisis.
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Beyond Bankruptcy: Does the U.S. Bankruptcy Code Provide a Fresh Start To Entrepreneurs?
Aparna Mathur
Journal of Banking & Finance, November 2013, Pages 4198–4216
Abstract:
This paper assesses the extent to which the U.S. bankruptcy system is effective in providing small businesses a “fresh start” after a bankruptcy filing. I use data from the 1993, 1998 and 2003 National Survey of Small Business Finances to explore how firms fare after a bankruptcy filing. On the positive side, previously bankrupt firms are not any more burdened than the average small firm by problems relating to profitability, cash flow, health insurance costs, or taxes. Further, the fact that these firms are surviving several years after the filing is itself a testament to the efficient functioning of the U.S. bankruptcy system. It suggests that the bankruptcy system goes a long way toward helping businesses recover after a bankruptcy filing. However, the one area of concern that persists after a filing is financing or credit access. In general, these firms have a nearly 24 percentage point higher likelihood of being denied a loan and are charged interest rates that are more than 1 percentage point higher than those charged to other businesses. A bankruptcy affects all types of financing, even trade credit, which is a significant form of lending between businesses. In fact, it appears that firms with a bankruptcy record are rationed out of the market, with all types of loans being denied at significantly higher rates than other firms. Further, my results show that bankruptcy leads to a class of discouraged borrowers who are significantly less likely to even apply for a loan.
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Who Gets Credit after Bankruptcy and Why? An Information Channel
Ethan Cohen-Cole, Burcu Duygan-Bump & Judit Montoriol-Garriga
Journal of Banking & Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom holds that individuals find it difficult to obtain new credit post-bankruptcy. Using credit bureau data, we test this hypothesis and show that more than 90% of bankrupt individuals receive credit shortly after filing. Individuals with good credit history prior to filing have reduced credit availability after bankruptcy while those with ex-ante low credit quality receive more credit. We show that credit supplied to low quality individuals is severely curtailed during the financial crisis. We also find that the default probability on new debt increases after bankruptcy, especially among individuals with high ex-ante credit score. These findings are consistent with an information channel, in which bankruptcy reveals new information about a borrower’s credit quality.
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Olivier Blanchard & Marianna Riggi
Journal of the European Economic Association, October 2013, Pages 1032–1052
Abstract:
In the 1970s, large increases in the price of oil were associated with sharp decreases in output and large increases in inflation. In the 2000s, even larger increases in the price of oil were associated with much milder movements in output and inflation. Using a structural VAR approach, Blanchard and Gali (in J. Gali and M. Gertler (eds.) 2009, International Dimensions of Monetary Policy, University of Chicago Press, pp. 373–428) argued that this reflected a change in the causal relation from the price of oil to output and inflation. They then argued that this change could be due to a combination of three factors: a smaller share of oil in production and consumption, lower real wage rigidity, and better monetary policy. Their argument, based on simulations of a simple new-Keynesian model, was informal. Our purpose in this paper is to take the next step, and to estimate the explanatory power and contribution of each of these factors. To do so, we use a minimum distance estimator that minimizes, over the set of structural parameters and for each of two samples (pre- and post-1984), the distance between the empirical SVAR-based impulse response functions and those implied by a new-Keynesian model. Our empirical results point to an important role for all three factors.
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Railroads and American Economic Growth: A “Market Access” Approach
Dave Donaldson & Richard Hornbeck
NBER Working Paper, July 2013
Abstract:
This paper examines the historical impact of railroads on the American economy. Expansion of the railroad network may have affected all counties directly or indirectly – an econometric challenge that arises in many empirical settings. However, the total impact on each county is captured by changes in that county's “market access,” a reduced-form expression derived from general equilibrium trade theory. We measure counties' market access by constructing a network database of railroads and waterways and calculating lowest-cost county-to-county freight routes. As the railroad network expanded from 1870 to 1890, changes in market access were capitalized into county agricultural land values with an estimated elasticity of 1.1. County-level declines in market access associated with removing all railroads in 1890 are estimated to decrease the total value of US agricultural land by 64%. Feasible extensions to internal waterways or improvements in country roads would have mitigated 13% or 20% of the losses from removing railroads.