Academic & Scholarly News

Consumer Financial Protection Clinic Position

07/30/15

Here's an opportunity to supervise a consumer financial protection clinic that has done some great work - information on the position and how to apply here. 

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Coming to Law -- Churches in Bankruptcy Edition

02/14/15

Credit Slips contributor Pamela Foohey has just posted her most recent work in her series of articles on churches in bankruptcy. I have been a big fan of this research project since Pamela was a fellow at the University of Illinois. She tells us not only about bankruptcy but also about the ways in which these churches look like most any small business.

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Man Bites Dog! Regulatory Edition

02/13/15

I woke up this morning to see an abstract of a paper entitled Is Regulation to Blame for the Decline in American Entrepreneurship? When I saw that one of the co-authors was on the George Mason University economics faculty, I said to myself, "

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Size Matters: Community Banks' Real Problem

02/10/15

Community banks are ailing.  Over the past decade many of them have failed or been gobbled up by larger banks. What's going on? 

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Sh*t In, Sh*t Out? the Problem of Mortgage Data Corruption & Empirical Analysis

02/09/15

Empirical economic analysis is a powerful tool.  It can elucidate correlations and sometimes even get us to causual explanations. But it has a serious weak-spot:  its value is entirely dependent upon the integrity of the data analyzed. To put the problem succinctly: sh*t in, sh*t out. 

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The Disappearance of HOEPA Loans

02/02/15

While I'm on the subject of dead markets, what about HOEPA loans?  HOEPA loans are super-high-cost loans that qualify for special consumer protections under the Home Owners Equity Protection Act of 1998. (Yes, that's the one that directed that the Fed "shall" implement a rule on abusive lending, which the Fed understood to be discretionary until 2008.)  

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Second-Liens and the Leverage Option

01/28/15

Susan Wachter and I have a new (short!) paper up on SSRN. It's called Second-Liens and the Leverage Option, and is about the curious absence of negative pledge clauses in US home mortgages, which enabled enormous amounts of second-lien leverage (much more than anyone realized) during the housing bubble.

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Safe Banking

12/31/14

Just in time for the new year, I've got a new article called Safe Banking up on SSRN. The article is a first principles reexamination of the industrial organization of financial services. It identifies the institutional combination of deposits and lending as the key problem in our financial system.

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