Is competition a cure for confusion? Evidence from the residential mortgage market
利用全国抵押贷款发放调查数据，研究发现金融素养更高和考虑更多贷款机构的借款人支付的抵押贷款利率更低，但竞争并不能替代金融素养，知情者和无知者之间的利率差距难以通过简单干预缩小。
Abstract Using the National Survey of Mortgage Originations, we document that borrowers who are more financially sophisticated (measured by their self‐reported understanding of the mortgage process) and more exposed to competition (measured by the number of lenders they considered) pay lower mortgage rate spreads. Yet, competition is not a substitute for sophistication: the benefits of competition accrue to sophisticates as well as to naïfs. Our results complement those from the literature detailing the limits of advice and education, and collectively they paint a pessimistic view about the prospects for simple interventions to close the mortgage rate gap between the informed and the naive.