Nancy Wallace

Research Expertise and Interest

housing price indices, real estate price dynamics, mortgage valuation models: prepayment and default, mortgage contract design, mortgage backed security trading and valuation, executive stock option valuation, and energy efficient mortgage underwriting, and climate risk

Research Description

Nancy Wallace is a Professor of Finance and Real Estate and holds the Lisle and Roslyn Payne Chair in Real Estate and Capital Markets at the Haas School of Business, the University of California, Berkeley.  She is Chair of the Real Estate Group, Co-Chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, and directs the Real Estate and Financial Markets Laboratory.  She teaches asset-backed securitization, real estate investment analysis, real estate strategy, and real estate finance at Haas. Her research focus includes residential house price dynamics, mortgage contract design and pricing, securitization and asset backed security pricing and hedging, lease contract design and pricing, methods to underwrite energy efficiency in commercial mortgages, and valuation models for executive stock options. 

Wallace has served as a visiting scholar at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, the Université de Cergy Pointoise, Centre de Recherche THEMA (Théorie Economique, Modélisation, et Applications), and the Stockholm School of Economics.  She is a past President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association and a past member of the AREUEA Board of Directors.  Wallace served on the Financial Research Advisory Committee, Office of Financial Research, U.S. Treasury Department (2013-2016), the Model Validation Council (MVC) of the Federal Reserve System (2013-2016), and served as chair of the MVC 2015-2016.

In the News

Looming nightmare in mortgage industry, experts warn

Berkeley Haas Professors Nancy Wallace and Richard Stanton were some of the few voices to forewarn of the massive risk posed by shoddy practices in the mortgage industry prior to the 2008 financial crisis. Unfortunately, history seems to be repeating itself.