Abstract
The Danish mortgage market is large and sophisticated. However, most Danish mortgage banks advise private home-owners based on simple, if sensible, rules of thumb. In recent years a number of papers (from Nielsen and Poulsen in J Econ Dyn Control 28:1267–1289, 2004 over Rasmussen and Zenios in J Risk 10:1–18, 2007 to Pedersen et al. in Ann Oper Res, 2013) have suggested a model-based, stochastic programming approach to mortgage choice. This paper gives an empirical comparison of performance over the period 2000–2010 of the rules of thumb to the model-based strategies. While the rules of thumb slightly outperform a passive benchmark on average and are less risky than pure adjustable rate loans, we find considerable gains from using the model-based strategies. Using a strategy that minimizes conditional-value-at-risk lowers average effective yearly interest rate over a 10-year horizon by 0.3–0.9 %-points (depending on the borrower’s level of conservatism) compared to the rules of thumb without increasing the risk. The answer to the question in the title is thus affirmative.
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We thank Boligøkonomisk Videncenter for funding this project and HIPERFIT for subsequent support.
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Rasmussen, K.M., Madsen, C.A. & Poulsen, R. Can home-owners benefit from stochastic programming models? A study of mortgage choice in Denmark. Comput Manag Sci 11, 5–23 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10287-013-0170-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10287-013-0170-x