Equilibrium in collateralized asset markets: credit contractions and negative equity loans

We address a general equilibrium model with collateralized debt, credit contractions, and financial market segmentation. Restrictions on credit access make borrower’s optimal payment strategies–coupon payment, prepayment, and default–sensitive to idiosyncratic factors, even though the only payment enforcement is the seizure of collateral guarantees. We prove equilibrium existence, characterize optimal borrower’s payment strategies, and provide a numerical example illustrating our main results. A remarkable feature of our model is that it rationalizes the prevalence of negative equity non-recourse loans.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304406814001347