We examine how option compensation affects banks' risky mortgage origination and sale decisions before the financial crisis in 2008. We find that, in the period immediately before the financial crisis, option compensation has little impact on the riskiness of mortgages originated and is negatively associated with mortgage lenders' propensity to sell risky mortgages. The results are consistent with banks' incentives to maximize revenues from origination and servicing fees while managing risk exposure by adjusting the sale of risky mortgages. For identification, we use bank-year fixed effects and matched loan applications to control for both supply- and demand-side factors of mortgage lending. We find similar results when using the variation in option compensation generated by the implementation of FAS 123R.

我们研究了 2008 年金融危机前的期权补偿如何影响银行的风险抵押贷款发放和销售决策。我们发现，在金融危机之前的时期，期权补偿对抵押贷款发放的风险几乎没有影响，并且与抵押贷款人出售风险抵押贷款的倾向。结果与银行在通过调整风险抵押贷款的销售来管理风险敞口的同时，最大化来自发起和服务费的收入的动机是一致的。为了识别，我们使用银行年固定效应和匹配的贷款申请来控制抵押贷款的供给侧和需求侧因素。当使用由实施 FAS 123R 产生的期权补偿的变化时，我们发现了类似的结果。