Federal Trade Commission Protecting America's Consumers

Michael Baye, Director of the Bureau of Economics, Federal Trade Commission

Real estate and mortgage market experts will explain how and why the mortgage market developed to include products with a wide variety of features offered to consumers with varying credit histories and assets. Panelists will provide an historical overview of the mortgage market, an understanding of developments of the non-prime mortgage market, and an analysis of mortgage features of concern to consumer policy analysts, including: pre-payment penalties, no down-payment loans, interest-only mortgages, and various adjustable interest rate products. They will also examine changes in mortgage retailing.

Session Participants:

Susan M. Wachter, University of Pennsylvania
Anthony Pennington-Cross, Marquette University
Souphala Chomsisengphet, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Christopher J. Mayer, Columbia University and Visiting Scholar, Federal Reserve Bank of     New York
Morris Kleiner, University of Minnesota
Richard M. Todd, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneaopolis
Paul Pautler, Federal Trade Commission

This panel will feature experts on information economics, consumer behavior, and consumer information research in the mortgage market. Panelists will provide an overview of the role of information on consumer choice from an economic perspective, and empirical research on consumer mortgage knowledge and consumer understanding of mortgage disclosures. The role of advertising in the mortgage market will also be examined.

Session Participants:

David Laibson, Harvard University
Jonathan Levin, Stanford University
Brent Ambrose, Penn State University
Karen Pence, Federal Reserve Board of Governors
James Lacko, Federal Trade Commission
Janis Pappalardo, Federal Trade Commission

Thomas Pahl, Federal Trade Commission (Chair and Discussion Leader)

William Kovacic, Chairman, Federal Trade Commission

Experts on housing markets, mortgage markets, consumer information and consumer behavior will be asked to consider how consumer information issues and changes in the mortgage market, discussed in the two prior sessions, may be related to recent problems in the mortgage market.

Primary Participants (with all previous speakers invited to participate):

Paul S. Willen, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
John G. Lynch, Jr., Duke University
Alex Pollock, American Enterprise Institute
David Weil, Boston University

Pauline Ippolito, Federal Trade Commission (Chair and Discussion Leader)

This final panel will discuss how consumer information policies could be developed to help prevent deception and delinquencies in the mortgage market. The panel will include experts on information mortgage policy proposals, disclosure design, consumer behavior, and mortgage finance needs of consumers. Panelists will consider what information people need most, when they need the information, and the role of consumer research in designing and testing information that consumers will understand.

Session Participants:

Jeanne Hogarth, Federal Reserve Board of Governors
Vanessa Perry, George Washington University
Susan Kleimann, Kleimann Communication Group
Annamaria Lusardi, Dartmouth College
Sumit Agarwal, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Susan Woodward, Sand Hill Econometrics

Jesse Leary, Federal Trade Commission (Chair and Discussion Leader)

Janis Pappalardo, Federal Trade Commission