• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.147-179
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• 2005

It is frequently said that mortgage-backed securities (MBS) of different security designs are issued in an attempt to meet the varying needs and expectations of investors. If this is true indeed, MBS of complicated risk-return characteristics are likely to be priced higher than MBS of simple risk-return characteristics we. We test this implication by establishing a recombining binomial interest rate prepayment model with a burnout effect embedded. More specifically, we compare the relative values (utilities) of a pass-through and a PAC- Support collateralized mortgage obligation(CMO), and theoretically show why and how the CMO is more highly valued than is the pass-through. The model is established such that mortgage prepayment is a function of the current value of, and the past path of, the mort-gage market rate. Since we work on not the total value of the two MBS but the value of each tranche of either MBS, the test results could be robust to slightly different versions of similar tests, which may be done in the future.