How Do Banks and Households Manage Interest Rate Risk? Evidence from the Swiss Mortgage Market

Christoph Basten, Benjamin Guin and Cathérine Tahmee Koch
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Catherine Tahmee Casanova

No 6649, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We exploit a unique data set that features both un-intermediated mortgage requests and independent offers from multiple banks for each request. We show that households typically are not prudent risk managers but prioritize the minimization of current mortgage payments over the risk of possible hikes in future mortgage payments. We also provide evidence that banks do influence the contracted mortgage rate fixation periods, trading off their own exposure to interest rate risk against the borrowers’ affordability and credit risk. Our results challenge the implicit assumption of the existing mortgage choice literature whereby fixation periods are determined entirely by households.

Keywords: Fixed-Rate Mortgage (FRM); Adjustable-Rate Mortgage (ARM); fixation period; maturity mismatch; interest rate risk; credit risk; duration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 E43 G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-eur, nep-mac, nep-rmg and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp6649.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6649

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().