The Impact of the BP Oil Spill on Residential Mortgage Lending and Its Mechanisms
利用BP石油泄漏作为准自然实验，发现该事件导致墨西哥湾沿岸地区抵押贷款申请拒绝率上升近2个百分点，其中抵押品价值渠道是关键传导机制，且对依赖证券化融资的机构影响更大。
ABSTRACT This paper employs the BP oil spill as a quasi‐natural experiment and examines its effects on residential mortgage lending in the affected Gulf coast areas. We construct a unique dataset by using information from the Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Technique program and mapping those observations to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act lending dataset. Our difference‐in‐differences estimation results show that the denial rate of mortgage applications rose by nearly 2 percentage points as a result of the oil spill, whilst accounting for various fixed effects at the lender and census tract levels. We also find that the collateral value channel played a crucial role in the propagation mechanism of the oil spill and its impact on the lending activities of financial institutions. Furthermore, depending on lenders' funding models, the oil spill triggered a heterogeneous lending response, resulting in a more pronounced lending contraction for institutions with higher exposure to funding through securitization.