Mortgage-Default Research and the Recent Foreclosure Crisis
本文回顾了近期止赎危机引发的抵押贷款违约研究热潮，总结了数据改进、动态优化模型及反向因果分析等进展，并指出未来需厘清负面生活事件与负资产对违约的相对贡献，以及为何违约率仍偏低。
This article reviews the surge in research on mortgage default inspired by the recent foreclosure crisis. Economists already understood a great deal about default, both theoretically and empirically, when the crisis began, but new research has moved the frontier further by improving data sources, building dynamic optimizing models of default, and explicitly addressing reverse causality between rising foreclosures and falling house prices. Mortgage defaults also featured prominently in early papers that pointed to subprime and other privately securitized mortgages as fundamental drivers of the housing boom, although this research has been criticized recently. Going forward, improvements to data and models will allow researchers to make progress on the two central questions in this literature. First, what are the relative contributions of adverse life events and negative equity to mortgage default? Second, why is default so rare, even among people with deep negative equity or acute financial distress?