Sunk Costs and Mortgage Default

A paper with Eric Rosenblatt and Vincent Yao. The abstract:

In this paper, we estimate default hazard functions that include standard variables along with borrowers sunk cost: i.e., down payment at loan origination. After testing large numbers of specifications, we find that after controlling for mark-to-market loan-to-value, initial combined loan to value remains an important predictor of default. We also find, contrary to Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, that there is not a specific point at which one observes a discontinuous default probability, but that it is rather that default is smooth in mark-to-market LTV.

Paul Goldberger on Dubai

The architecture critic writes:

The Burj Khalifa, like most super-tall skyscrapers, looks best from afar, and, certainly, it can’t do much to mitigate the real horror of Dubai, which isn’t the fact that most of the towers look gaudy on the sky line but that they are wretched at street level. This is a city that has grown with utter hostility to the idea of the street. The main commercial thoroughfare, Sheikh Zayed Road, lined with skyscrapers, is a twelve-lane highway. It’s impossible to get anywhere here without a car, and there is no place to walk except inside a mall. The city is completing a transit system, and there are some strikingly handsome, glass-enclosed elevated stations, but it is an idealized version of a Western-style metro, dropped onto an urban plan designed solely for the automobile; it’s hard to believe that it will make much difference. The biggest group of pedestrians I saw in five days was on the promenade outside the Dubai Mall, where people gather to look across an artificial lagoon at the Burj Khalifa while watching fountains dance to Middle Eastern music. To them, the Burj is a backdrop for a show.

I couldn't say it better myself.

Why does NBC do this?

NBC blocks its shows from streaming in India, but Viacom (Comedy Central, CBS) doesn't. So I have been able to watch the Daily Show and Letterman, but I couldn't watch Conan's last show.

Why do they do this? Students here seem pretty hooked on Jon Stewart; it seems to me this might translate to DVD revenue somehow.

Richard DeKaser says only 87 of 299 US cities now have overvalued housing markets

His list seems quite reasonable to me. And his 2006 list pretty much nailed overvalued markets.