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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2023
Adverse market events can affect credit supply not only by hurting financial fundamentals but also by changing the risk-taking behaviors of individual decision-makers. We provide micro-level evidence of this individual decision-making channel in the U.S. mortgage market. We find that mortgage application rejection rates are more sensitive to foreclosure intensity when loan officers are more exposed to foreclosure news, despite the same housing market and bank fundamentals. Loans originated from the affected branches have lower ex post default rates, consistent with higher lending standards being applied. In the aggregate, this effect results in tighter credit supply during housing market downturns.
We thank Sumit Agarwal, Ran Duchin, Dimas Fazio, Jarrad Harford (the editor), Zhiguo He, David Hirshleifer, Jose Liberti, Chen Lin, Wenlan Qian, Joao Santos, Arkodipta Sarkar, Hongjun Yan, and the conference participants at the 2021 Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER) Annual Conference, the 2021 China International Conference in Finance, and the 2021 Midwest Finance Association Annual Meeting for helpful discussions and comments. We also thank Isabel Kitschelt for her excellent research assistance.