IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/13487.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Mortgage Refinancing: A Closed Form Solution

Author

Listed:
  • Sumit Agarwal
  • John C. Driscoll
  • David Laibson

Abstract

We derive the first closed-form optimal mortgage refinancing rule. The expression is derived by using the Lambert-W function to solve a tractable class of mortgage refinancing problems. We calibrate our solution and show that our quantitative results closely match those reported by researchers who use numerical methods.

Suggested Citation

  • Sumit Agarwal & John C. Driscoll & David Laibson, 2007. "Optimal Mortgage Refinancing: A Closed Form Solution," NBER Working Papers 13487, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13487
    Note: AP EFG PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13487.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew Kalotay & Deane Yang & Frank J. Fabozzi, 2004. "An Option-Theoretic Prepayment Model For Mortgages And Mortgage-Backed Securities," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 7(08), pages 949-978.
    2. Wayne R. Archer & David C. Ling, 1993. "Pricing Mortgage‐Backed Securities: Integrating Optimal Call and Empirical Models of Prepayment," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 21(4), pages 373-404, December.
    3. Patric H. Hendershott & Robert Van Order, 1987. "Pricing Mortgages: An Interpretation of the Models and Results," NBER Working Papers 2290, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. John Y. Campbell, 2006. "Household Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1553-1604, August.
    5. Kenneth B. Dunn & Chester S. Spatt, 2005. "The Effect of Refinancing Costs and Market Imperfections on the Optimal Call Strategy and the Pricing of Debt Contracts," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 33(4), pages 595-617, December.
    6. Dixit, Avinash K & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1977. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 297-308, June.
    7. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro, 1987. "Monopolistic Competition and the Effects of Aggregate Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 647-666, September.
    8. Giliberto, S Michael & Thibodeau, Thomas G, 1989. "Modeling Conventional Residential Mortgage Refinancings," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 2(4), pages 285-299, December.
    9. T.L. Tyler Yang & Brian A. Maris, 1993. "Mortgage Refinancing with Asymmetric Information," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 21(4), pages 481-510, December.
    10. Archer, Wayne R. & Ling, David C. & McGill, Gary A., 1996. "The effect of income and collateral constraints on residential mortgage terminations," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3-4), pages 235-261, June.
    11. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson, 2018. "Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets," Chapters, in: Victor J. Tremblay & Elizabeth Schroeder & Carol Horton Tremblay (ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization, chapter 3, pages 40-74, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    12. Chris Downing & Richard Stanton & Nancy Wallace, 2005. "An Empirical Test of a Two-Factor Mortgage Valuation Model: How Much Do House Prices Matter?," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 33(4), pages 681-710, December.
    13. Xavier Gabaix & Arvind Krishnamurthy & Olivier Vigneron, 2007. "Limits of Arbitrage: Theory and Evidence from the Mortgage‐Backed Securities Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(2), pages 557-595, April.
    14. Eduardo S. Schwartz & Walter N. Torous, 1993. "Mortgage Prepayment and Default Decisions: A Poisson Regression Approach," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 21(4), pages 431-449, December.
    15. Li, Minqiang & Pearson, Neil D. & Poteshman, Allen M., 2004. "Conditional estimation of diffusion processes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 31-66, October.
    16. Bennett, Paul & Peach, Richard & Peristiani, Stavros, 2001. "Structural Change in the Mortgage Market and the Propensity to Refinance," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(4), pages 955-975, November.
    17. Andrew H. Chen & David C. Ling, 1989. "Optimal Mortgage Refinancing with Stochastic Interest Rates," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 17(3), pages 278-299, September.
    18. Green, Jerry & Shoven, John B, 1986. "The Effects of Interest Rates on Mortgage Prepayments," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 18(1), pages 41-59, February.
    19. Dunn, Kenneth B & McConnell, John J, 1981. "Valuation of GNMA Mortgage-Backed Securities," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 36(3), pages 599-616, June.
    20. Yongheng Deng & John M. Quigley & Robert Van Order, 2000. "Mortgage Terminations, Heterogeneity and the Exercise of Mortgage Options," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(2), pages 275-308, March.
    21. Agarwal, Sumit & Chang, Yan & Yavas, Abdullah, 2012. "Adverse selection in mortgage securitization," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(3), pages 640-660.
    22. Caplin, Andrew & Freeman, Charles & Tracy, Joseph, 1997. "Collateral Damage: Refinancing Constraints and Regional Recessions," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(4), pages 496-516, November.
    23. John P. Harding, 1997. "Estimating Borrower Mobility from Observed Prepayments," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 25(3), pages 347-371, September.
    24. Hurst, Erik & Stafford, Frank, 2004. "Home Is Where the Equity Is: Mortgage Refinancing and Household Consumption," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(6), pages 985-1014, December.
    25. Paul Bennett & Richard Peach & Stavros Peristiani, 2000. "Implied Mortgage Refinancing Thresholds," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 28(3), pages 405-434.
    26. Yan Chang & Abdullah Yavas, 2009. "Do Borrowers Make Rational Choices on Points and Refinancing?," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 37(4), pages 635-658, December.
    27. Quigley, John M, 1987. "Interest Rate Variations, Mortgage Prepayments and Household Mobility," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 69(4), pages 636-643, November.
    28. Green, Richard K. & LaCour-Little, Michael, 1999. "Some Truths about Ostriches: Who Doesn't Prepay Their Mortgages and Why They Don't," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 233-248, September.
    29. Schwartz, Eduardo S & Torous, Walter N, 1992. "Prepayment, Default, and the Valuation of Mortgage Pass-through Securities," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 221-239, April.
    30. Francis A. Longstaff, 2005. "Borrower Credit and the Valuation of Mortgage-Backed Securities," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 33(4), pages 619-661, December.
    31. Follain, James R & Scott, Louis O & Yang, T L Tyler, 1992. "Microfoundations of a Mortgage Prepayment Function," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 197-217, June.
    32. Benjamin J. Keys & Tanmoy Mukherjee & Amit Seru & Vikrant Vig, 2010. "Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence from Subprime Loans," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 307-362.
    33. Stanton, Richard, 1995. "Rational Prepayment and the Valuation Mortgage-Backed Securities," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(3), pages 677-708.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Agarwal, Sumit & Driscoll, John D. & Laibson, David I., 2012. "Optimal Mortgage Reï¬ nancing: A Closed Form Solution," Scholarly Articles 9918811, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    2. Sumit Agarwal & Richard J. Rosen & Vincent W. Yao, 2013. "Why do borrowers make mortgage refinancing mistakes?," Working Paper Series WP-2013-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    3. Sumit Agarwal & Richard J. Rosen & Vincent Yao, 2016. "Why Do Borrowers Make Mortgage Refinancing Mistakes?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(12), pages 3494-3509, December.
    4. Lu Fang, 2020. "Mortgage Pricing Implications of Prepayment: Separating Pecuniary and Non-pecuniary Prepayment," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 239-269, April.
    5. Agarwal, Sumit & Ambrose, Brent W. & Chomsisengphet, Souphala & Liu, Chunlin, 2006. "An empirical analysis of home equity loan and line performance," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 444-469, October.
    6. Xudong An & John Clapp & Yongheng Deng, 2010. "Omitted Mobility Characteristics and Property Market Dynamics: Application to Mortgage Termination," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 245-271, October.
    7. Michael LaCour-Little & Michael Marschoun & Clark L. Maxam, 2002. "Improving Parametric Mortgage Prepayment Models with Non-parametric Kernel Regression," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 24(3), pages 299-328.
    8. Hui Chen & Michael Michaux & Nikolai Roussanov, 2020. "Houses as ATMs: Mortgage Refinancing and Macroeconomic Uncertainty," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(1), pages 323-375, February.
    9. Hyeongjun Kim & Hoon Cho & Doojin Ryu, 2018. "Characteristics of Mortgage Terminations: an Analysis of a Loan-Level Dataset," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 647-676, November.
    10. Souphala Chomsisengphet & Anthony Pennington-Cross, 2006. "Subprime refinancing: equity extraction and mortgage termination," Working Papers 2006-023, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    11. Archer, Wayne R. & Ling, David C. & McGill, Gary A., 1997. "Demographic versus Option-Driven Mortgage Terminations," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 137-163, June.
    12. Nicholas Sharp & Paul Johnson & David Newton & Peter Duck, 2009. "A New Prepayment Model (with Default): An Occupation-time Derivative Approach," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 118-145, August.
    13. Archer, Wayne R. & Ling, David C. & McGill, Gary A., 1996. "The effect of income and collateral constraints on residential mortgage terminations," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3-4), pages 235-261, June.
    14. John Clapp & Yongheng Deng & Xudong An, 2005. "Unobserved heterogeneity in Models of Competing Mortgage Termination Risks," Working Paper 8585, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.
    15. Yan Chang & Abdullah Yavas, 2009. "Do Borrowers Make Rational Choices on Points and Refinancing?," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 37(4), pages 635-658, December.
    16. Keys, Benjamin J. & Pope, Devin G. & Pope, Jaren C., 2016. "Failure to refinance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 482-499.
    17. Nicola Fusari & Wei Li & Haoyang Liu & Zhaogang Song, 2022. "Asset Pricing with Cohort‐Based Trading in MBS Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(6), pages 3249-3287, December.
    18. Agarwal, Sumit & Chomsisengphet, Souphala & Hassler, Olivier, 2005. "The impact of the 2001 financial crisis and the economic policy responses on the Argentine mortgage market," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 242-270, September.
    19. Yongheng Deng & Della Zheng & Changfeng Ling, 2005. "An Early Assessment of Residential Mortgage Performance in China," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 117-136, September.
    20. Jill Wetmore & Chiaku Ndu, 2006. "Mortgage Refinancing Activity: An Explanation [1990–2001]," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 75-86, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13487. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.