IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedfpr/y2009ijanx12.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The subprime mortgage crisis: irrational exuberance or rational error?

Author

Listed:
  • Nikola Kojucharov
  • Clyde F. Martin
  • Robert F. Martin
  • Lili Xu

Abstract

We present a model of the subprime market in which credit quality and loan performance are driven by a statistical process with idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. Investors use portfolio performance to infer the weight of each shock. We show that low and stable default rates from 2002-2005 convinced investors that the aggregate shock weight was small. In late 2006, when default rates surged, the market collapsed abruptly as investors abandoned their low-weight beliefs. We examine various proposals to fix the mortgage market and find that policy intervention has limited effectiveness in our model.

Suggested Citation

  • Nikola Kojucharov & Clyde F. Martin & Robert F. Martin & Lili Xu, 2009. "The subprime mortgage crisis: irrational exuberance or rational error?," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Jan.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfpr:y:2009:i:jan:x:12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/Kojucharov-Martin-Martin-Xu.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morris A. Davis, 2010. "housing and the business cycle," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Grossman, Sanford J & Laroque, Guy, 1990. "Asset Pricing and Optimal Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Illiquid Durable Consumption Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 25-51, January.
    3. Marjorie Flavin & Shinobu Nakagawa, 2004. "A Model of Housing in the Presence of Adjustment Costs: A Structural Interpretation of Habit Persistence," NBER Working Papers 10458, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Kristopher Gerardi & Adam Hale Shapiro & Paul S. Willen, 2007. "Subprime outcomes: risky mortgages, homeownership experiences, and foreclosures," Working Papers 07-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    5. Robert F. Martin, 2003. "Consumption, durable goods, and transaction costs," International Finance Discussion Papers 756, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Giovanni Dell’ariccia & Deniz Igan & Luc Laeven, 2012. "Credit Booms and Lending Standards: Evidence from the Subprime Mortgage Market," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44, pages 367-384, March.
    7. Kau, James B, et al, 1992. "A Generalized Valuation Model for Fixed-Rate Residential Mortgages," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 24(3), pages 279-299, August.
    8. L. Wray, 2008. "Lessons from the Subprime Meltdown," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(2), pages 40-68.
    9. Todd Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2005. "Owner-Occupied Housing as a Hedge Against Rent Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 763-789.
    10. Mark Doms & Frederick T. Furlong & John Krainer, 2007. "Subprime mortgage delinquency rates," Working Paper Series 2007-33, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    11. Marjorie Flavin & Takashi Yamashita, 2002. "Owner-Occupied Housing and the Composition of the Household Portfolio," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 345-362, March.
    12. Gervais, Martin, 2002. "Housing taxation and capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(7), pages 1461-1489, October.
    13. Davis, Morris A. & Martin, Robert F., 2009. "Housing, home production, and the equity- and value-premium puzzles," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 81-91, June.
    14. Jan Kregel, 2008. "Minsky’s Cushions of Safety: Systemic Risk and the Crisis in the U.S. Subprime Mortgage Market," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_93, Levy Economics Institute.
    15. Kau, James B & Keenan, Donald C & Muller, Walter J, III & Epperson, James F, 1993. "Option Theory and Floating-Rate Securities with a Comparison of Adjustable- and Fixed-Rate Mortgages," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(4), pages 595-618, October.
    16. Cox, John C & Ingersoll, Jonathan E, Jr & Ross, Stephen A, 1985. "An Intertemporal General Equilibrium Model of Asset Prices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(2), pages 363-384, March.
    17. Lambrecht, Bart M & Perraudin, William R M & Satchell, Steven, 2003. "Mortgage Default and Possession under Recourse: A Competing Hazards Approach," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(3), pages 425-442, June.
    18. Benjamin J. Keys & Tanmoy Mukherjee & Amit Seru & Vikrant Vig, 2010. "Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence from Subprime Loans," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 307-362.
    19. Diaz-Serrano, Luis, 2005. "Income volatility and residential mortgage delinquency across the EU," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 153-177, September.
    20. John C. Weicher, 2007. "The Long and Short of Housing: The Home Ownership Boom and the Subprime Foreclosure Bust," NFI Policy Briefs 2007-PB-09, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Davis, Morris A. & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2015. "Housing, Finance, and the Macroeconomy," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 753-811, Elsevier.
    2. Khandani, Amir E. & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C., 2013. "Systemic risk and the refinancing ratchet effect," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 29-45.
    3. repec:esx:essedp:712 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    5. Jonathan Halket & Santhanagopalan Vasudev, 2014. "Saving Up or Settling Down: Home Ownership over the Life Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(2), pages 345-366, April.
    6. Jan Rouwendal, 2009. "Housing Wealth and Household Portfolios in an Ageing Society," De Economist, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 1-48, March.
    7. In Ho Song, 2013. "House Prices and Monetary Policy: Focus on The Elasticity of Intra-Temporal Substitution between Housing and Consumption," 2013 Meeting Papers 747, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2009. "Accounting For Changes In The Homeownership Rate," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(3), pages 677-726, August.
    9. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Krueger, Dirk, 2011. "Consumption And Saving Over The Life Cycle: How Important Are Consumer Durables?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(5), pages 725-770, November.
    10. Rodney Ramcharan & Christopher Crowe, 2013. "The Impact of House Prices on Consumer Credit: Evidence from an Internet Bank," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(6), pages 1085-1115, September.
    11. Bonnet, Carole & Gobillon, Laurent & Laferrère, Anne, 2010. "The effect of widowhood on housing and location choices," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 94-108, June.
    12. Halket, Jonathan R & Vasudev, Santhanagopalan, 2012. "Home Ownership, Savings, and Mobility Over The Life Cycle," Economics Discussion Papers 2876, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    13. Joseph B. Nichols, 2007. "Nominal mortgage contracts and the effects of inflation on portfolio allocation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2007-67, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    14. William Goetzmann & Liang Peng & Jacqueline Yen, 2012. "The Subprime Crisis and House Price Appreciation," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 36-66, January.
    15. Wenli Li & Haiyong Liu & Fang Yang & Rui Yao, 2016. "Housing Over Time And Over The Life Cycle: A Structural Estimation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1237-1260, November.
    16. Jian Chen & Jin Xiang & Tyler T. Yang, 2018. "Re-Default Risk of Modified Mortgages," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 21(1), pages 1-40.
    17. Bonnet, Carole & Gobillon, Laurent & Laferrère, Anne, 2010. "The effect of widowhood on housing and location choices," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 94-108, June.
    18. European Central Bank & Stefano Corradin, 2009. "Household Leverage," 2009 Meeting Papers 906, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. repec:esx:essedp:718 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. John Krainer & Elizabeth Laderman, 2011. "Prepayment and delinquency in the mortgage crisis period," Working Paper Series 2011-25, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    21. Joseph Nichols, 2004. "A Life-cycle Model with Housing, Portfolio Allocation, and Mortgage Financing," Econometric Society 2004 North American Winter Meetings 205, Econometric Society.
    22. Antonia Diaz & Maria Jose Luengo Prado, 2008. "On the User Cost and Homeownership," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(3), pages 584-613, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Subprime mortgage;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedfpr:y:2009:i:jan:x:12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.