This paper analyzes mortgage-market equilibrium when borrower default costs are private information. By applying the approach of Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976), it is shown that asymmetric information regarding default costs distorts the contract choices available in the mortgage market,...

This paper analyzes mortgage-market equilibrium when borrower default costs are private information. By applying the approach of Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976), it is shown that asymmetric information regarding default costs distorts the contract choices available in the mortgage market,...

This paper analyzes a simple mobility-based model of mortgage lending and uses the results to illuminate the issue of mortgage points. The model predicts the points/interest-rate trade-off observed in the market and it also predicts that mobile borrowers choose low-points/high- rate contracts...

The spatial mismatch hypothesis, first stated by Kain (1968), argues that job decentralization in U.S. cities has contributed to low incomes and high unemployment rates for black Americans. Decentralization relocates job sites to white suburban communities far from the CBD, and housing...

This paper offers a new theoretical approach to urban squatting, reflecting the view that squatters and formal residents compete for land within a city. The key implication of this view is that squatters quot;squeezequot; the formal market, raising the price paid by formal residents. The...