Securitization

Abstract: We conduct a within-county analysis using detailed ZIP code—level data to document new findings regarding the origins of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The sharp increase in mortgage defaults in 2007 is significantly amplified in subprime ZIP codes, or ZIP codes with a disproportionately large share of subprime borrowers as of 1996. Prior to the default crisis, these subprime ZIP codes experience an unprecedented relative growth in mortgage credit. The expansion in mortgage credit from 2002 to 2005 to subprime ZIP codes occurs despite sharply declining relative (and in some cases absolute) income growth in these neighborhoods. In fact, 2002 to 2005 is the only period in the past eighteen years in which income and mortgage credit growth are negatively correlated. We show that the expansion in mortgage credit to subprime ZIP codes and its dissociation from income growth is closely correlated with the increase in securitization of subprime mortgages.

Abstract: The theory of “securitization” developed by the Copenhagen School provides one of the most innovative, productive, and yet controversial avenues of research in contemporary security studies. This article provides an assessment of the foundations of this approach and its limitations, as well as its significance for broader areas of International Relations theory. Locating securitization theory within the context of both classical Realism influenced by Carl Schmitt, and current work on constructivist ethics, it argues that while the Copenhagen School is largely immune from the most common criticisms leveled against it, the increasing impact of televisual communication in security relations provides a fundamental challenge for understanding the processes and institutions involved in securitization, and for the political ethics advocated by the Copenhagen School.

Abstract: The prime claim of the theory of securitization is that the articulation of security produces a specific threatening state of affairs. Within this theory, power is derived from the use of ‘appropri...

Abstract: This paper summarizes and quantifies past changes in the U.S. commercial banking industry and forecasts what the future may hold. It emphasizes regulatory changes and technical and financial innovations as the central driving forces behind transformation of the industry. Changes in the regulatory environment include the deregulation of deposit accounts, several major changes in capital requirements, reductions in reserve requirements, expansion of bank powers, and liberalization of geographic restrictions on intrastate and interstate banking. Important technical innovations that have affected the banking industry include the advances in information processing and telecommunications technologies that facilitate the low-cost, rapid transfer of information and funds that fuel modern financial markets. Innovations in applied finance include those that have allowed the securitization of many traditional bank assets and have expanded the scope and volume of financial derivative activity. Many of these regulatory, technical and financial changes have altered the way in which banks compete with each other, and have brought about substantial external competition to U.S. banking organizations from foreign banks and from nonbank financial intermediaries. To document and assess the effects of these forces, the authors examine the evolution over time of the balance sheets, off-balance sheet activities, and income statements of all insured U.S. commercial banks from 1979 through 1994. The authors believe the most novel aspect of their analysis derives from the estimation of the patterns of bank lending to borrowers of different sizes over time. A key question they examine is how the well-known reduction in bank commercial and industrial lending of the early 1990s affected different sizes of borrowers. They estimate a 34.8 percent real contraction in loans to borrowers with bank credit of less than $1 million during the first half of the 1990s, a substantial decline in lending to (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)