This paper reviews recent research on mortgage default, focusing on the relationship of this research to the recent foreclosure crisis. Research on defaults was advanced both theoretically and empirically by the time the crisis began, but economists have moved the frontier further by improving data sources, building dynamic optimizing models of default, and explicitly addressing reverse causality between rising foreclosures and falling house prices. Mortgage defaults were also a key component of early research that pointed to subprime and other privately securitized mortgages as fundamental drivers of the housing boom, although this research has been criticized recently. Going forward, improvements to data and models will allow researchers to explore the central unsolved question in this area: why mortgage default is so rare, even for households with high levels of negative equity or financial distress.

中文翻译：

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抵押违约研究与近期止赎危机

本文回顾了有关抵押贷款违约的最新研究，重点是该研究与近期止赎危机之间的关系。危机开始之时，对违约的研究在理论上和经验上都得到了发展，但是经济学家通过改善数据来源，建立动态的违约优化模型并明确解决止赎权上升和房价下跌之间的反向因果关系，进一步拓宽了边界。抵押违约也是早期研究的关键组成部分，尽管次级抵押贷款和其他私人证券化抵押是住房繁荣的基本驱动力，但该研究最近遭到批评。展望未来，对数据和模型的改进将使研究人员能够探索该领域尚未解决的核心问题：为什么抵押贷款违约如此罕见，