Bankruptcy Exemptions and the Market for Mortgage Loans
研究了美国各州破产豁免政策对抵押贷款市场的影响，发现高豁免水平并未导致抵押贷款利率上升或贷款被拒概率增加。
The recent explosion in personal bankruptcy filings has motivated research into whether credit markets are being adversely affected by generous legal provisions. Empirically, this question is examined by comparing credit conditions and bankruptcy exemptions across states. We note that the literature has focused on aggregate household credit, making no distinction between secured and unsecured credit. We argue that such aggregation obscures important differences in forms of credit. Most significant, property exemptions do not prevent the home mortgage creditor from foreclosing on the home if not fully repaid. This makes it unlikely that the home mortgage lender will be adversely affected by the exemptions. We argue further that some property exemptions, in fact, may have some beneficial effects for home mortgage lenders. Using both household‐level data and state‐level data, we show that in the 1990s high exemption levels have not tended to increase mortgage rates or increase the probability of being denied a mortgage.