Publications
Publications
Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(218)
- News (36)
- Research (143)
- Multimedia (1)
- Faculty Publications (63)
Page 1 of 218
Results →
- 2021
- Working Paper
Closing Costs, Refinancing, and Inefficiencies in the Mortgage Market
By: David Hao Zhang
In the US, borrowers often finance the price of mortgage origination by agreeing to higher mortgage rates for a given principal amount. I show that for standard fixed-rate, prepayable mortgages this contractual feature has two consequences. First, it leads to increased... View Details
- 2015
- Mimeo
Market Power in Mortgage Lending and the Transmission of Monetary Policy
By: David S. Scharfstein and Adi Sunderam
We present evidence that high concentration in mortgage lending reduces the sensitivity of mortgage rates and refinancing activity to mortgage-backed security (MBS) yields. We isolate the direct effect of concentration and rule out alternative explanations in two ways.... View Details
- February 1997
- Background Note
Savings and Loans and the Mortgage Markets
By: Robert C. Merton and Alberto Moel
Provides a brief overview of the history of the savings and loans, the savings and loans crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, and the creation of the mortgage markets in the United States. Also explains briefly the most common types of mortgage-backed securities available. View Details
- 2011
- Chapter
Toward a Three-Tier Market for U.S. Home Mortgages
By: Robert C. Pozen
This chapter analyzes the various forms of federal programs to support home mortgages–both government-insured mortgages and privately issued mortgages purchased by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. It argues that there will be a third tier of home mortgages created by the... View Details
- May 2005 (Revised January 2006)
- Case
Mortgage Backs at Ticonderoga
Ticonderoga is a small hedge fund that trades in mortgage-backed securities--securities created from pooled mortgage loans. They often appear as straightforward so-called "pass-throughs," but can also be pooled again to create collateral for a mortgage security known... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
When Insurers Exit: Climate Losses, Fragile Insurers, and Mortgage Markets
By: Ishita Sen, Pari Sastry and Ana-Maria Tenekedjieva
This paper studies how homeowners insurance markets respond to growing climate losses and how this impacts mortgage market dynamics. Using Florida as a case study, we show that traditional insurers are exiting high risk areas, and new lower quality insurers are... View Details
Market Power in Mortgage Lending and the Transmission of Monetary Policy
We present evidence that high concentration in mortgage lending reduces the sensitivity of mortgage rates and refinancing activity to mortgage-backed security (MBS) yields. We isolate the direct effect of concentration and rule out alternative explanations in two ways.... View Details
- February 1986 (Revised September 1994)
- Case
Travelers Mortgage Securities CMO
Describes a series of collateralized mortgage obligations offered by Travelers Insurance. Provides a general description of the life insurance business and the role of life insurance in the capital markets. Also describes a variety of mortgage related instruments,... View Details
- October 2019
- Article
Partial Deregulation and Competition: Effects on Risky Mortgage Origination
By: Marco Di Maggio, Amir Kermani and Sanket Korgaonkar
We exploit the OCC's preemption of national banks from state laws against predatory lending as a quasi-experiment to study the effect of deregulation and its interaction with competition on the supply of complex mortgages. Following the preemption ruling, national... View Details
- July 2020
- Case
Mortgage Backed Securities and the Covid-19 Pandemic
By: Emil N. Siriwardane, Luis M. Viceira and Dean Xu
In April 2020, global financial markets were still reeling as the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly across the world. Global equity markets had initially fallen by 30% in response to the pandemic, and high-yield credit markets had dropped by nearly 20%. In contrast,... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Mortgage Prepayment, Race, and Monetary Policy
By: Kristopher Gerardi, Paul Willen and David Hao Zhang
Over the period 2005 to 2015, Black borrowers paid more than 40 basis points higher mortgage interest rates than Non-Hispanic white borrowers. We show that the main reason is that Non-Hispanic white borrowers are much more likely to exploit periods of falling interest... View Details
Keywords: Mortgages; Consumer Behavior; Race; Ethnicity; Equality and Inequality; Policy; United States
- Research Summary
Working on paper on how to restructure the public and private market for home mortgages in the US
the paper analyzes the main rationales for subsidizing homeownership from an international perspective, offers criteria for who should be subsidized in the future, discusses how these governmental subsidies should be implemented and how the private market for mortgage... View Details
- April 2025
- Article
The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders
By: W. Scott Frame, Ruidi Huang, Erica Jiang, Yeonjoon Lee, Will Liu, Erik J. Mayer and Adi Sunderam
We study links between the labor market for loan officers and access to mortgage credit. Using novel data matching the (near) universe of mortgage applications to loan officers, we find that minorities are significantly underrepresented among loan officers. Minority... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised June 2010)
- Case
U.S. Subprime Mortgage Crisis: Policy Reactions (B)
By: Laura Alfaro and Renee Kim
In March 2009, the U.S. economy was in a severe recession not seen since the Great Depression after the subprime mortgage crisis had spiraled out of control. The situation had dramatically changed in one year since the Federal Reserve Board had helped to bailout... View Details
Borrowing to Live: Consumer and Mortgage Credit Revisited
Americans are awash in debt. Credit undergirds daily life more than ever before—it is one of the defining aspects of life in the United States today. The damage from a depressed housing market is exacerbated by the subprime lender implosion, sending shock waves... View Details
- March 2010
- Teaching Note
Rosetree Mortgage Opportunity Fund (TN)
By: Victoria Ivashina and Andre F. Perold
Teaching Note for [209088]. View Details
- 2011
- Book
Moving Forward: The Future of Consumer Credit and Mortgage Finance
By: Nicolas P. Retsinas and Eric Belsky
The recent collapse of the mortgage market revealed fractures in the credit market that have deep roots in the system's structure, conduct, and regulation. The time has come for a clear-eyed assessment of what happened and how the system should be strengthened and... View Details
- March 8, 2008
- Comment
Marketing Your Way Through a Recession
By: John A. Quelch
The signs of an imminent recession are all around us. The spillover from the subprime mortgage crisis is weakening both consumer confidence and the consumer spending—much of it on credit—that has been buoying the U.S. economy. View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Recession; Products And Sales; Core Values; Fluctuation; Volatility; Economic Growth; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation; Growth and Development; Marketing Strategy; Product Marketing; Risk and Uncertainty; Salesforce Management; Asia; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America
Moving Forward: The Future of Consumer Credit and Mortgage Finance
The recent collapse of the mortgage market revealed fractures in the credit... View Details
- 11 Oct 2022
- Research & Ideas
Shrinking the Racial Wealth Gap, One Mortgage at a Time
and approved, but when minority loan officers shepherd those applications, approval rates increase significantly, says Adi Sunderam, the Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance at Harvard Business School, in the working paper, “The Impact of Minority... View Details