Refinancing a first mortgage puts legal principles in conflict when other, junior, liens also exist. On one hand, the principle that seniority follows time priority leaves the new refinancing mortgage junior to mortgages that were junior to the original, refinanced first mortgage. On the other...

When home prices threaten to decline, lenders bearing more of a community's mortgage risk have an incentive to combat this decline with new lending that boosts demand. We test whether this incentive drove the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) to guarantee riskier mortgages in early 2007,...

Regulators express growing concern over predatory loans, which the authors take to mean loans that borrowers should decline. Using a model of consumer credit in which such lending is possible, they identify the circumstances in which it arises both with and without competition. The authors find...

Regulators express growing concern over quot;predatory lending,quot; which we taketo mean lending that extracts excessive rent from borrowers. We present a rational model of consumer credit in which such lending is possible, and we identify the circumstances in which it arises with and without...