Elizabeth Mays is American economist

Economist

An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

, best known for her books on credit scoring.

Career

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mays worked as a government economist in Washington

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 specializing financial institutions, first at the Government Accountability Office

Government Accountability Office

The Government Accountability Office is the audit, evaluation, and investigative arm of the United States Congress. It is located in the legislative branch of the United States government.-History:...

, and later at the Office of Thrift Supervision

Office of Thrift Supervision

The Office of Thrift Supervision was a United States federal agency under the Department of the Treasury that charters, supervises, and regulates all federally- and state-chartered savings banks and savings and loans associations. It was created in 1989 as a renamed version of another federal agency...

. There she was part of a team of economists who built the first industry model to evaluate the interest rate risk profile of S&Ls in reaction to the savings and loan crisis

Savings and Loan crisis

The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was the failure of about 747 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States...

 of the 1980s and 1990s. During this time Mays also published, with Anthony G. Cornyn, Interest Rate Risk Models: Theory and Practice (1997) a collection of articles on interest rate risk measurement and management.

In 1996, Mays became involved with credit risk modeling when she went to work for Freddie Mac. In 1998 she published Credit Risk Modeling: Design and Application, and in 2001, the Handbook of Credit Scoring. Since 1998, Mays has been a banking economist, running modeling and analytics organizations first for Citi, then JP Morgan Chase. Her 2004 book, Credit Scoring for Risk Managers is a widely-used reference book in the credit scoring arena.

Publications

• 'A Profit-Maximizing Model of Federal Home Loan Bank Behavior', Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2:331-347 (1989).
• 'The Demand for Federal Home Loan. Bank Advances by Thrift Institutions: Some Recent Evidence' Elizabeth Mays and Edward DeMarco, Real Estate Economics, volume 17, Issue 3. pp. 363–379.
• 'Interest-Rate Risk Models Used by Depository Institutions', The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities, Frank Fabozzi, ed, pp. 751–761 (1997).
• 'The Estimation of the Duration of Nonmaturity Deposits', Controlling & Managing Interest-Rate Risk, Anthony G. Cornyn ed., (1997) pp. 70–87.
• Anthony G Cornyn and Elizabeth Mays (1997) "Interest Rate Risk Models: Theory and Practice". Glenlake Publishing Company.
• Elizabeth Mays (1998) "Credit Risk Modeling: Design and Application". Dearborn Publishers.
• Elizabeth Mays (2001). Handbook of Credit Scoring". Glenlake Publishing.
• 'Using statistical models to counter consumer correlations conundrum', The RMA Journal, June 2002.
• 'The role of credit scores in consumer lending today', The RMA Journal, October 2003.
• Elizabeth Mays (2004). Credit Scoring for Risk Managers: The Handbook for Lenders". Southwestern.
• 'In Turbulent Times, Custom Scorecards Can Offer Great Advantages', Mays, Elizabeth; Zhao, Feng; Ma, Guozhong, The RMA Journal, v90n8, 20–22, May 2008
• 'Scenario Analysis for Board Risk Management', The Corporate Board, pp. 17–21, July/August 2009.