IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bis/biswps/294.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The risk of relying on reputational capital: a case study of the 2007 failure of New Century Financial

Author

Listed:
  • Allen B Frankel

Abstract

The quality of newly originated subprime mortgages had been visibly deteriorating for some time before the window for such loans was shut in 2007. Nevertheless, a bankruptcy court's directed ex post examination of New Century Financial, one of the largest originators of subprime mortgages, discovered no change, over time, in how that firm went about its business. This paper employs the court examiner's findings in a critical review of the procedures used by various agents involved in the origination and securitisation of subprime mortgages. A contribution of this paper is its elaboration of the choices and incentives faced by the various types of institutions involved in those linked processes of origination and securitisation. It highlights the limited roles played by the originators of subprime loans in screening borrowers and in bearing losses on defective loans that had been sold to securitisers of pooled loan packages (ie, mortgage-backed securities). It also illustrates the willingness of the management of those institutions that became key players in that market to put their reputations with fixed-income investor clients in jeopardy. What is perplexing is that such risk exposures were accepted by investing firms that had the wherewithal and knowledge to appreciate the overall paucity of due diligence in the loan origination processes. This observation, in turn, points to the conclusion that the subprime episode is a case in which reputational capital, a presumptively effective motivator of market discipline, was not an effective incentive device.

Suggested Citation

  • Allen B Frankel, 2009. "The risk of relying on reputational capital: a case study of the 2007 failure of New Century Financial," BIS Working Papers 294, Bank for International Settlements.
  • Handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:294
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bis.org/publ/work294.pdf
    File Function: Full PDF document
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://www.bis.org/publ/work294.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William Adams & Liran Einav & Jonathan Levin, 2009. "Liquidity Constraints and Imperfect Information in Subprime Lending," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 49-84, March.
    2. Lily Hua Fang, 2005. "Investment Bank Reputation and the Price and Quality of Underwriting Services," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2729-2761, December.
    3. Mitchell, Janet & Fender, Ingo, 2009. "Incentives and Tranche Retention in Securitisation: A Screening Model," CEPR Discussion Papers 7483, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Ingo Fender & Janet Mitchell, 2005. "Structured finance: complexity, risk and the use of ratings," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, June.
    5. Mr. Paul S. Mills & Mr. John Kiff, 2007. "Money for Nothing and Checks for Free: Recent Developments in U.S. Subprime Mortgage Markets," IMF Working Papers 2007/188, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Gary Gorton, 2008. "The panic of 2007," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 131-262.
    7. Geetesh Bhardwaj & Rajdeep Sengupta, 2008. "Where's the smoking gun? a study of underwriting standards for US subprime mortgages," Working Papers 2008-036, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    8. Allen Frankel, 2006. "Prime or not so prime? An exploration of US housing finance in the new century," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.
    9. Ashcraft, Adam B. & Schuermann, Til, 2008. "Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 191-309, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mervyn K. Lewis, 2014. "An Islamic perspective on the global financial crisis and its aftermath," Chapters, in: M. Kabir Hassan & Mervyn K. Lewis (ed.), Handbook on Islam and Economic Life, chapter 31, pages iii-iii, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Jaime Caruana, 2010. "Financial Stability: Ten Questions and about Seven Answers," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Christopher Kent & Michael Robson (ed.),Reserve Bank of Australia 50th Anniversary Symposium, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    3. Rupeika-Apoga, Ramona, 2010. "Globalisation and the financial sector," SEER Journal for Labour and Social Affairs in Eastern Europe, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 13(2), pages 257-269.
    4. M. Kabir Hassan & Mervyn K. Lewis (ed.), 2014. "Handbook on Islam and Economic Life," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 16009.

    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. Ingo Fender & Martin Scheicher, 2009. "The pricing of subprime mortgage risk in good times and bad: evidence from the ABX.HE indices," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(24), pages 1925-1945.
    2. Scheicher, Martin & Fender, Ingo, 2009. "The pricing of subprime mortgage risk in good times and bad: evidence from the ABX.HE indices," Working Paper Series 1056, European Central Bank.
    3. Ashcraft, A. & Goldsmith-Pinkham, P. & Vickery, J., 2010. "MBS Ratings and the Mortgage Credit Boom," Other publications TiSEM aea4b6fb-eb57-49d4-a347-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2012. "The Credit Ratings Game," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 85-112, February.
    5. Gary Gorton, 2008. "The panic of 2007," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 131-262.
    6. Luci Ellis, 2010. "The Housing Meltdown: Why Did It Happen in the United States?," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 13(3), pages 351-394.
    7. Mitchell, Janet & Fender, Ingo, 2009. "Incentives and Tranche Retention in Securitisation: A Screening Model," CEPR Discussion Papers 7483, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Roy, Saktinil & Kemme, David M., 2012. "Causes of banking crises: Deregulation, credit booms and asset bubbles, then and now," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 270-294.
    9. Pagès, Henri, 2013. "Bank monitoring incentives and optimal ABS," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 30-54.
    10. Dwyer, Gerald P. & Tkac, Paula, 2009. "The financial crisis of 2008 in fixed-income markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(8), pages 1293-1316, December.
    11. Michal Jurek & Pawel Marszalek, 2014. "Subprime mortgages and the MBSs in generating and transmitting the global financial crisis," Working papers wpaper40, Financialisation, Economy, Society & Sustainable Development (FESSUD) Project.
    12. Alejandro Justiniano & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Andrea Tambalotti, 2013. "The Effects of the Saving and Banking Glut on the U.S. Economy," NBER Chapters, in: NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics 2013, pages 52-67, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Anna Grodecka-Messi, 2019. "Subprime borrowers, securitization and the transmission of business cycles," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1600-1654, November.
    14. Capozza, Dennis R. & Order, Robert Van, 2011. "The great surge in mortgage defaults 2006-2009: The comparative roles of economic conditions, underwriting and moral hazard," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 141-151, June.
    15. Geetesh Bhardwaj & Rajdeep Sengupta, 2011. "Credit scoring and loan default," Working Papers 2011-040, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    16. Stijn Claessens, 2010. "The Financial Crisis," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 4(2), pages 177-196, May.
    17. Ronel Elul, 2015. "Securitization and mortgage default," Working Papers 15-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    18. 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.
    19. Augustin Landier & David Thesmar, 2011. "Regulating Systemic Risk through Transparency: Trade-Offs in Making Data Public," NBER Chapters, in: Risk Topography: Systemic Risk and Macro Modeling, pages 31-44, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Freixas, Xavier & Laux, Christian, 2011. "Disclosure, transparency, and market discipline," CFS Working Paper Series 2011/11, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    mortgage originators; reputational capital; securitisation;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bis:biswps:294. 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: Martin Fessler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bisssch.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.