Authors:

  • David Scharfstein
  • Adi Sunderam

Excerpt

Market Power in Mortgage Lending and the Transmission of Monetary Policy. David Scharfstein, Adi Sunderam, September 2014, Paper. "We present evidence that high concentration in mortgage lending reduces the sensitivity of mortgage rates and refinancing activity to mortgage-backed security (MBS) yields. We isolate the direct effect of concentration and rule out alternative explanations in two ways. First, we use a matching procedure to compare high- and low-concentration counties that are very similar on observable characteristics and find similar results. Second, we examine counties where bank mergers..." Link