Mortgage Valuation Models: Embedded Options, Risk, and Uncertainty contains a detailed description of the sophisticated theories and advanced methods that the authors employ in real-world analyses of mortgage-backed securities. Issues such as complexity, borrower options, uncertainty, and model risk play a central role in the authors' approach to the valuation of MBS. The coverage spans the range of mortgage products from loans and TBA (to-be-announced) pass-through securities to subordinate tranches of subprime-mortgage securitizations. With reference to the classical CAPM and APT, the book advocates extending the concept of risk-neutrality to modeling home prices and borrower options, well beyond interest rates. It describes valuation methods for both agency and non-agency MBS including pricing new loans; approaches to prudent risk measurement, ranking, and decomposition; and methods for modeling prepayments and defaults of borrowers.
The authors also reveal quantitative causes of the 2007-09 financial crisis and provide insight into the future of the U.S. housing finance system and mortgage modeling as this field continues to evolve. This book will serve as a foundation for the future development of models for mortgage-backed securities.
Alexander Levin is Director of Financial Engineering at Andrew Davidson & Co., Inc. He has developed innovative and efficient valuation models for mortgage-backed securities, including the Active-Passive Decomposition burnout model, the concept of prepay risk-and-option-adjusted valuation, and the method of Credit Option-Adjusted Spread and non-Monte Carlo shortcuts. His recent work focuses on the valuation of instruments exposed to credit risk, home-price modeling, and projects related to the MBS crisis. Levin has been a guest speaker at both academic and practitioner events and has published a number of papers. Levin is a recipient of the 2014 Mortgage Banking Magazine's Technology All-Stars award. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from Naval Engineering Institute, Leningrad, and a Ph.D. in Control and Dynamic Systems from Leningrad State University.