Portfolios of mortgage loans played an important role in the Great Recession and continue to compose a material part of bank assets. This chapter investigates how cross-sectional dependence in the underlying properties flows through to the loan returns, and thus, the risk of the portfolio. At...

This dissertation focuses on the mortgage default behavior and the valuation of distressed properties. Three essays are included.The first essay uses New Orleans foreclosure data, where each property has three appraisals, to investigate the factors affecting appraisal bias and accuracy, and to...

We investigate how market participants possessing varying degrees of anonymity reduce asymmetric information costs in an electronic auction market using a quantifiable measure of reputation. The data suggest that purchasers in this self-enforcing market use reputation to price information...