Vyacheslav Mikhed

Do House Prices Reflect Fundamentals? Aggregate and Panel Data Evidence

We investigate whether recently high and consequently rapidly decreasing U.S. house prices have been justified by fundamental factors such as personal income, population, house rent, stock market wealth, building costs, and mortgage rate. We first conduct the standard unit root and cointegration tests with aggregate data. Nationwide analysis potentially suffers from problems of the low power of stationarity tests and the ignorance of dependence among regional house markets. Therefore, we also employ panel data stationarity tests which are robust to cross-sectional dependence. Contrary to previous panel studies of the U.S. housing market, we consider several, not just one, fundamental factors. Our results confirm that panel data unit root tests have greater power as compared with univariate tests. However, the overall conclusions are the same for both methodologies. The house price does not align with the fundamentals in sub-samples prior to 1996 and from 1997 to 2006. It appears that the real estate prices take long swings from their fundamental value and it can take decades before they revert to it. The most recent correction (a collapsed bubble) occurred around 2006.

How Do Exogenous Shocks Cause Bankruptcy? Balance Sheet and Income Statement Channels

We are the first to examine whether exogenous shocks cause personal bankruptcy through the balance sheet channel and/or the income statement channel. For identification, we examine the effect of exogenous, politically motivated government payments on 200,000 Canadian bankruptcy filings. We find support for the balance sheet channel, in that receipt of the exogenous cash increases the net balance sheet benefits of bankruptcy (unsecured debt discharged minus liquidated assets forgone) required by filers. We also find limited support for the income statement channel, in that exogenous payments reduce bankruptcy filings from individuals whose current expenses exceed their current income.

Consumer Use of Fraud Alerts and Credit Freezes: An Empirical Analysis

Fraud alerts — initial fraud alerts, extended fraud alerts, and credit freezes — help protect consumers from the consequences of identity theft. At the same time, they may impose costs on lenders, credit bureaus, and, in some instances, consumers. We analyze a unique data set of anonymized credit bureau files to understand how consumers use these alerts. We document the frequency and persistence of fraud alerts and credit freezes. Using the experience of the data breach at the South Carolina Department of Revenue, we show that consumers who file initial fraud alerts or credit freezes likely do so out of precaution. Consumers who file extended alerts are more likely to be actual victims of identity theft. We find that consumers are heterogeneous in their choice of alerts and that their choices are correlated with important characteristics found in their credit bureau files. These facts are useful for interpreting consumer responses to data breaches and for policymakers.

Can credit cards with access to complimentary credit score information benefit consumers and lenders

Barclaycard U.S. is one of a growing number of banks offering cardholders free access to their FICO® Credit Scores with credit card products. On November 19, 2014, Paul Wilmore of Barclaycard U.S. presented Barclays’ rationale for offering this feature and provided his perspective on its development. He also discussed how consumers responded to this feature in terms of their spending, repayment behavior, and lifespan and intensity of their relationship with the bank. According to Wilmore, program participation is correlated with increased card spending, decreased credit utilization and delinquency, increased digital engagement, and lower cardholder attrition.

Financial Benefits, Travel Costs, and Bankruptcy

We are the first to show that the cost of personal bankruptcy filers traveling to their bankruptcy trustees affects bankruptcy choices. We use detailed balance sheet, income statement, and location data from 400,000 Canadian bankruptcies. To control for endogenous trustee selection, we use the location of local government offices as an instrument for the location of bankruptcy trustees (while filers interact with trustees, and trustees interact with local government, filers do not interact with the local government). We find that increased travel costs reduce the number of filings. Furthermore, for those individuals who do file, we find that their increased travel costs need to be compensated by increased financial benefits of bankruptcy. Filers without cars (higher travel costs), as well as those with jobs (higher opportunity costs), receive larger per-kilometer financial benefits from bankruptcy.

Peers’ Income and Financial Distress: Evidence from Lottery Winners and Neighboring Bankruptcies

We examine whether relative income differences among peers can generate financial distress. Using lottery winnings as plausibly exogenous variations in the relative income of peers, we find that the dollar magnitude of a lottery win of one neighbor increases subsequent borrowing and bankruptcies among other neighbors. We also examine which factors may mitigate lenders’ bankruptcy risk in these neighborhoods. We show that bankruptcy filers obtain more secured, but not unsecured, debt, and lenders provide additional credit to low-risk, but not high-risk, debtors. In addition, we find evidence consistent with local lenders taking advantage of soft information to mitigate credit risk.Received October 12, 2016; editorial decision January 15, 2019 by Editor Philip Strahan. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Does the Relative Income of Peers Cause Financial Distress? Evidence from Lottery Winners and Neighboring Bankruptcies

SUPERSEDED BY WP 18-22 We examine whether relative income differences among peers can generate financial distress. Using lottery winnings as plausibly exogenous variations in the relative income of peers, we find that the dollar magnitude of a lottery win of one neighbor increases subsequent borrowing and bankruptcies among other neighbors. We also examine which factors may mitigate lenders’ bankruptcy risk in these neighborhoods. We show that bankruptcy filers can obtain secured but not unsecured debt, and lenders provide secured credit to low-risk but not high-risk debtors. In addition, we find evidence consistent with local lenders reducing bankruptcy risk using soft information.A major overhaul of the property tax system in 2013 in the city of Philadelphia has generated significant variations in the amount of property taxes across properties. This exogenous policy shock provides a unique opportunity to identify the causal effects of gentrification, which is often accompanied by increased property values, on homeowners’ tax payment behavior and residential mobility. The analysis, based on a difference-in-differences framework, suggests that gentrification leads to a higher risk of delinquency on homeowners’ tax bills on average, but there was no sign of a large-scale departure of elderly or long-term homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods within five years after adoption of the new policy. While tax delinquencies were somewhat inflated by appeals for reassessments, programs designed to provide tax relief for long-term homeowners help mitigate the risk of tax delinquencies and displacement. Findings from this study help researchers, policymakers, and practitioners better understand the mechanisms through which gentrification may impact long-term homeowners and the effectiveness of policies to mitigate these tax burdens and displacement.