Borrowing decisions affect most households, with large stakes and implications for research
subfields as varied as macroeconomics and industrial organization. I review theoretical and …

Background The US foreclosure crisis intensified markedly during the Great Recession of
2007-09, and currently an estimated five percent of US residential properties are more than …

In response to the wave of residential mortgage foreclosures in the past few years, federal,
state and local government intervention programs have aimed to reduce the presumed …

Homeowners in financial distress can use bankruptcy to avoid defaulting on their mortgages,
since filing loosens their budget constraints. But the 2005 bankruptcy reform made …

This paper examines how differences in state foreclosure laws influence the incidence of
default in the residential mortgage market. In particular, we examine how judicial review …

Using US household‐level data and plausibly exogenous variation in the location‐timing of
home purchases with a single lender, I find that negative home equity causes a 2% to 6 …

For households with homes worth less than the mortgage I test the effect of “household debt
overhang” on their labor supply decisions. I utilize a new transaction-level dataset with …

This paper examines the impact of refinancing on mortgage defaults based on an empirical
investigation of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). We study a unique …

This paper documents the abnormally slow recovery in the labor market during the Great
Recession, and analyzes how mortgage modification policies contributed to delayed …

Following the historic decline in house prices during the recent financial crisis more than 15
million US mortgages, or approximately 1/3rd of mortgaged properties, had negative home …