Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that purchase mortgages and issue mortgage-backed securities (MBS). In addition, the GSEs are active participants in the primary and secondary mortgage markets on behalf of their own portfolios of MBS. Because these portfolios have grown quite large, portfolio purchases as well as MBS issuance are likely to be important forces in the mortgage market. This paper examines the statistical evidence of a connection between GSE actions and the interest rates paid by mortgage borrowers. We find that both portfolio purchases and MBS issuance have negligible effects on mortgage rate spreads and that purchases are not any more effective than securitization at reducing mortgage interest rate spreads. We also examine the 1998 liquidity crisis and find that GSE portfolio purchases did little to affect interest rates paid by borrowers. These results are robust to alternative assumptions about causality and to model specification.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2005.
"Predatory Trading,"
Journal of Finance,
American Finance Association, vol. 60(4), pages 1825-1863, 08.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Markus K. Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pedersen, 2004.
"Predatory Trading,"
NBER Working Papers
10755, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Markus K Brunnermeier & Lasse Heje Pederson, 2003.
"Predatory Trading,"
FMG Discussion Papers
dp441, Financial Markets Group.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Brunnermeier, Markus K & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2004.
"Predatory Trading,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
4639, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)