Mortgage Burnout and Selection Effects in Heterogeneous Cox Hazard Models

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how heterogeneity and selection effects influence the hazard rate in mortgage pools, using Cox process models to explain burnout phenomena in both deterministic and stochastic settings.

Contribution

It extends the structural understanding of hazard rates by incorporating stochastic intensity models and selection effects, providing new insights into mortgage prepayment dynamics.

Findings

Hazard rate is a survival-weighted mean of individual hazards.

Selection effects introduce a negative term in hazard evolution.

Stochastic models include a diffusion component from common factors.

Abstract

We study the aggregate hazard rate of a heterogeneous population whose individual event intensities are modeled as Cox (doubly stochastic) processes. In the deterministic hazard setting, the observed pool hazard is the survival weighted mean of the individual hazards, and its time derivative equals the mean individual hazard drift minus a variance term. This yields a transparent structural explanation of burnout in mortgage pools. We extend this perspective to stochastic intensity models. The observed pool hazard remains a survival-weighted mean, but now evolves as an Ito process whose drift contains the mean drift of the individual hazards and a negative selection term driven by cross-sectional dispersion, together with a diffusion term inherited from the common factor. We formulate the general identity and discuss special cases relevant to mortgage prepayment modeling.