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Using a dataset covering one quarter of the U.S. general-purpose credit card market, we document that 29% of accounts regularly make payments at or near the minimum payment. We exploit changes in issuers' minimum payment formulas to distinguish between liquidity constraints and anchoring as explanations for the prevalence of near-minimum payments. Nine to twenty percent of all accounts respond more to the formula changes than expected based on liquidity constraints alone, representing a lower bound on the role of anchoring. Disclosures implemented by the CARD Act, an example of one potential policy solution to anchoring, resulted in fewer than 1% of accounts adopting an alternative suggested payment. Based on back-of-envelope calculations, the disclosures led to $62 million in interest savings per year, but would have saved over $2 billion per year if all anchoring consumers had adopted the new suggested payment. Our results show that anchoring to a salient contractual term has a significant impact on household debt.
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In the U.S. mortgage market, private mortgage insurance (PMI) is mandated for high-leverage mortgages purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to serve as a private market check on GSE risk-taking. However, we document that PMI firms dramatically expanded insurance on high-risk mortgages at the tail-end of the housing boom, contradicting the industry's own research regarding house price risk. Using three detailed sources of mortgage and insurance data, we examine PMI application denial rates, default rates on PMI-backed loans, and growth rates of high-leverage lending around the GSE conforming loan limit, along with information extracted from company, industry and regulatory filings and reports. We conclude that PMI behavior during the housing boom in part reflects a "moral hazard" incentive inherent to insurance companies in general to underprice risk and be undercapitalized. Our results suggest that rather than providing discipline, private mortgage insurers facilitated GSE risk-taking.
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No area of law and policy is more central to our well-being than housing, yet research on the topic is too often produced in disciplinary or methodological silos that fail to connect to policy on the ground. This pathbreaking book, which features leading scholars from a range of academic fields, cuts across disciplines to forge new connections in the discourse. In accessible prose filled with cutting-edge ideas, these scholars address topics ranging from the recent financial crisis to discrimination and gentrification and show how housing law and policy impacts household wealth, financial markets, urban landscapes, and local communities. Together, they harness evidence and theory to capture the 'state of play' in housing, generating insights that will be relevant to academics and policymakers alike. This title is also available as Open Access.
Housing --- Housing policy. --- Law and legislation. --- Housing and state --- State and housing --- City planning --- Social policy --- City planning and redevelopment law --- Government policy --- housing --- gentrification --- segregation --- redlining --- law and economics --- affordability --- property values --- mortgages --- urban planning --- land use
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Households that fail to refinance their mortgage when interest rates decline can lose out on substantial savings. Based on a large random sample of outstanding U.S. mortgages in December of 2010, we estimate that approximately 20% of households for whom refinancing would be optimal and who appeared unconstrained to do so, had not taken advantage of the lower rates. We estimate the present-discounted cost to the median household who fails to refinance to be approximately $11,500, making this a particularly large consumer financial mistake. To shed light on possible mechanisms and corroborate our main findings, we also provide results from a mail campaign targeted at a sample of homeowners that could benefit from refinancing.
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