By exploiting state-level variations in mortgage broker licensing regulations, we examine how licensing requirements affect mortgage loan performances and the mortgage origination market. Using data on private label securitized loans, we find that loans in states with a toughened broker licensing had a smaller increase in default rates. This effect is larger in the years leading up to the financial crisis, for borrowers with lower credit scores, cash-out-refinance loans, high-minority neighborhoods, and loans originated by nonbanks. The improved performance with toughened broker licensing is only partially reflected in loan pricing. Stronger broker licensing requirements have slightly positive effects on the mortgage approval rates, and are associated with overall less risky borrowers and loan characteristics in applications and in originations.

We document the existence of expertise rents by finding that financial experts on audit committees obtain higher abnormal returns from insider purchases than do non‐financial experts on audit committees. We further investigate whether information processing skills work alone or jointly with an information advantage to generate expertise rents. While financial experts on audit committees outperform financial experts on other committees, financial experts on compensation, executive, nominating, and governance committees do not outperform non‐financial experts on these committees. These findings suggest that expertise rents are domain‐specific and can be obtained only when directors have both access to private information and information processing skills. In additional testing, we find that expertise rents for financial experts on audit committees are primarily driven by non‐accounting financial experts, whose finance or supervisory experience could make them better than accounting financial experts in understanding market conditions and assessing firm risk.