In the midst of the Great Recession, cities across the country were impacted in a variety of ways, and most saw rapid increases in foreclosures. This report uses a conceptual framework composed of three elements, stressors, vulnerability, and resiliency, to look at the implications of foreclosures for cities. First, factors that cause foreclosures in the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas are examined. Then this report looks specifically at the economic impact of foreclosures. Using multiple regression analyses, the findings suggest that foreclosures have negative economic impacts and can be considered a stressor on a city’s economy. The application of this stressor has implications for a city’s vulnerability and resiliency. To some extent, local authorities have limited authority and capacity to prevent foreclosures. Therefore, this report also explores alternative approaches that cities can take to increase economic resiliency and competitiveness in the context of stressors such as foreclosures. / text

The United States is in the midst of a rather severe housing crisis. Home prices have declined and foreclosures have increased in cities all over the country. The crisis began in 2007 and has continued into the fourth quarter of 2008. Some cities have been severely affected by the housing crisis while others have been able to maintain relatively healthy housing markets. This paper demonstrates the local nature of housing markets and the factors which shape them. Analyses of the local housing markets of Austin, TX, Atlanta, GA and Miami, FL comprise the bulk of this paper and demonstrate the broad spectrum of housing market conditions that exist today. The lessons learned from the three case studies finally lead to some recommendations for local planners which could prove effective for creating and maintaining healthy local housing markets. / text

Many communities around the country had already been dealing with the problems of increasing and concentrated foreclosures for several years. Thus, the evidence of the social costs of foreclosures will guide policy makers in deciding what policies should be put in many communities that foreclosures have plagued. The objective of this research is to quantify the price-depressing foreclosure effects on existing home sale prices as one of the major social costs for communities. The first methodological goal is to simultaneously quantify the magnitude of the direct and the spillover effects of foreclosures on existing home prices. The second methodological goal is to provide usefulness concerning spatial econometric models in measuring the impact of foreclosures on housing prices. This study was estimated with traditional hedonic and spatial hedonic models specified during two different housing cycles in Phoenix, Arizona, during a strong housing market when prices were up (2005) and a down housing market with falling prices (2008). It has been shown that foreclosures have negative effects on existing home prices in the neighborhood, depending on housing types and cycles. However, the OLS models do not correct for spatial autocorrelation problems and endogeneity that exist in a cross section of house prices and would overestimate absolute values of the coefficients. As alternatives, the maximum likelihood spatial lag or error model controls for spatial autocorrelation but still causes computation obstacles for large data sets and problems of heteroskedasticity in error terms. Thus, the preferred specification is a generalized method of moments (GMM) approach which requires weaker assumptions than the maximum likelihood application and has flexible form to large datasets. As a joint analysis, the most appropriate specification is the general spatial two-stage least-squares (GMM_2SLS) method with HAC (the spatial heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent) variance estimator. These findings provide further evidence that OLS estimates of a coefficient on a foreclosure indicator tend to overstate the direct or indirect foreclosure discount, ignoring spatial effects such as spatial dependence and endogeneity. With regard to the spillover effect of nearby foreclosures on home prices, both foreclosures of single family homes and condos are statistically significant and negatively impact each type of home sale prices. However, the cumulative effects of neighborhood foreclosures are much greater with nonlinear effects in a housing bust year than a housing boom year. Therefore, this study on price-depressing effects of foreclosures emphasizes the importance of the pre-foreclosure step as the beginning of following foreclosure processes, depending on housing types and housing market cycles.

This dissertation presents four essays. The first chapter builds a real-options, term structure model of the firm incorporating stochastic volatility and endogenous default to shed new light on the value premium, financial distress, momentum, and credit spread puzzles. The paper uses recently developed methodologies based on asymptotic expansions to solve the model. The second chapter, coauthored with Adam Guren, presents a model that shows how foreclosures can exacerbate a housing bust and delay the housing market's recovery. Quantitatively, the model successfully explains aggregate and retail price declines, the foreclosure share of volume, and the number of foreclosures both nationwide and across MSAs. The third and fourth chapters, coauthored with Stephen W. Salant and Jason Winfree, discuss the economics of untraceable experience goods in a variety of settings. The third chapter drops the "small country" assumption in the trade literature on collective reputation and shows how large exporters like China can address severe problems assuring the quality of its exports. The fourth chapter demonstrates how regulations in the formal sector of developing countries can lead to a quality gap between formal and informal sector goods. It moreover investigates how changes in regulation affect quality, price, aggregate production, and the number of firms in each sector. / Economics

This dissertation consists of three independent chapters, each of which use microeconomic data and methods to inform an analysis of macroeconomic models and questions. The first two chapters study the short-run dynamics of housing markets, while the last chapter studies fluctuations in labor markets. / Economics

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According to Peruvian legislation, through an escrow agreement a trustor transfers under a fiduciary domain in favor of an escrow agent various goods, rights and obligations, which must achieve certain purpose. These will constitute an autonomous patrimony that does not respond any obligation of the trustor and the agent escrow. Despite the clarity of this statement, the authors reveal that indeed there might be different interpretations about this agreement that have practical consequences with the treatment of real properties subject to fiduciary dominion. / De acuerdo a la legislación peruana, a través del contrato de fideicomiso, el fideicomitente transfiere en dominio fiduciario a favor del fiduciario diversos bienes, derechos y obligaciones, los mismos que deben ser afectados a la consecución de un determinado fin. De tal manera se constituye un patrimonio autónomo que no responde por las obligaciones del fideicomitente ni del fiduciario. Pese a la claridad de dichas disposiciones, los autores evidencian que en la realidad se presentan situaciones problemáticas de concepto que tienen consecuencias prácticas con el tratamiento de los inmuebles sujetos a dominio fiduciario.

This thesis contains three self-contained chapters, covering different subjects but using similar methods: The Effect of Foreclosure Laws on Securitization: Evidence from U.S. States shows that mortgage loans are less likely to be securitized in states with costlier foreclosure procedures. I interpret this in light of prior literature showing a higher foreclosure risk for securitized loans, due to unwillingness to renegotiate by the agents working on behalf of investors. Moreover, the magnitude of the effect increases for loans with higher risk of default, and disappears for loans where state foreclosure laws usually do not apply. Do daughters make family firms more sustainable? studies listed companies with a family owning a large block of shares, and asks how the family composition affects the company’s policies. Creating a novel Swedish data set, I find that environmental performance improves when the family has more daughters. The effect does not seem to operate through more adult daughters leading to more female CEOs or board members, or through the appointment of family members as CEOs. Bank taxes, leverage and risk uses staggered changes in US state-level bank taxation, and documents an increase in leverage when taxes are raised. Banks partly dampen the effect by adjusting their Tier 2 capital (a lower-quality form of regulatory capital that is less able to absorb losses), and by reducing the risk on the asset side of the balance sheet as measured by regulators. / <p>Diss. Stockholm :  Stockholm School of Economics, 2015. Introduction together with 3 papers</p>