State Foreclosure Laws and the Incidence of Mortgage Default
研究了美国各州止赎法律差异如何影响住房抵押贷款违约率，发现借款人友好型法律显著增加负资产借款人的违约概率，并分析了2008年后预防计划的效果。
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 requirements, lenders’ recourse rights (deficiency judgments), and state assistance programs for distressed borrowers affected the likelihood of default during the recent U.S. housing crisis. We argue that state foreclosure laws should have little effect on the likelihood of liquidity events (for example, shocks to borrowers’ ability to make payments) and thus provide a good instrument for identifying borrowers’ costs of default. We find that borrowers with negative home equity are significantly more likely to default in states with borrower-friendly foreclosure laws. Finally, we examine how recent state and federal loan foreclosure prevention programs affected the likelihood of default. Overall, we find a significant decline in the effect of judicial review requirements but not deficiency judgments on default after 2008.