Název: Financial skills and search in the mortgage market
Autoři: Cota, Marta ; Šterc, Ante
Typ dokumentu: Výzkumné zprávy
Rok: 2024
Jazyk: eng
Edice: CERGE-EI Working Paper Series, svazek: 780
Abstrakt: Are households with low financial skills disadvantaged in the mortgage market? Using stochastic record linking, we construct a unique U.S. dataset encompassing a rich set of mortgage details and borrowers’ characteristics, including their objective financial literacy measure. We find that households with low financial literacy are up to 4% more likely to search less and lock in at 15-20 b.p. higher rates. Upon origination, unskilled borrowers face a 35-45% higher mortgage delinquency and end up with a 30% lower likelihood of refinancing. Overall, for a $100,000 loan, the potential losses from low financial literacy are more than $9,329 over the mortgage duration. To understand how financial education, more accessible mortgages, or mortgage rate changes affect households with low financial literacy, we formulate and calibrate a mortgage search model with heterogeneous search frictions and endogenous financial skills. Our model estimates show that search intensity and financial skill variations contribute to 55% and 10% of mortgage rate variations, respectively. We find that i) more accessible mortgages lead to a higher delinquency risk among low-skilled households, ii) financial education mitigates the adverse effects of increased accessibility, and iii) low mortgage rates favor high-skilled homeowners and, by reinforcing refinancing activity, deepen consumption differences across different financial skill levels.
Klíčová slova: financial skills; mortgage refinancing; mortgage search

Instituce: Národohospodářský ústav AV ČR (web)
Informace o dostupnosti dokumentu: Dokument je dostupný na externích webových stránkách.
Externí umístění souboru: https://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp780.pdf
Původní záznam: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0353380

Trvalý odkaz NUŠL: http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-614323