The rapid growth of the stock market since 1990 has encouraged the view that corporate equity holdings are becoming the primary asset for a broad spectrum of American households. A closer look at the evidence, however, reveals that real estate continues to eclipse stocks as a share of most...

Although the United States has developed highly sophisticated markets for funding corporate investment projects, markets for financing home ownership are comparatively rudimentary. When a corporation wishes to fund a project, it can choose any mix of debt and equity financing. In contrast, to...

This chapter considers the structure of mortgage finance in the U.S., and its role in shaping patterns of homeownership, the nature of the housing stock, and the organization of residential activity. We start by providing some background on the design features of mortgage contracts that...

Using a rich database of non-prime mortgages from New York City, we find that census tract level neighborhood characteristics are important predictors of default behavior, even after controlling for an extensive set of controls for loan and borrower characteristics. First, default rates increase...

We use a detailed dataset of seriously delinquent mortgages to examine the dynamic process of mortgage default—from initial delinquency and default to final resolution of the loan and disposition of the property. We estimate a two-stage competing risk hazard model to assess the factors...

This paper estimates the extent to which reduced employment following job loss among older workers can be explained as a response to altered pension incentives and earnings opportunities. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we first examine how workers' earnings, assets, pensions...

Mortgage applications are a detailed and accurate source of household information that is verified by underwriters, making it a more accurate data source than self-reported survey answers. This paper discusses how mortgage data can be applied to areas of economics outside mortgage finance. As a...