| Title: |
PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE – PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE FURTHER, PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT THE AUTHORS ’ PERMISSION |
| Authors: |
Dimitris Christelis; Michael Ehrmann; Dimitris Georgarakos; Jel-codes D |
| Contributors: |
The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives |
| Source: |
http://www.ecb.europa.eu/events/pdf/conferences/131017/papers/Session_2_Christelis.pdf. |
| Publication Year: |
2013 |
| Collection: |
CiteSeerX |
| Subject Terms: |
household finance; household debt; counterfactual decompositions |
| Description: |
In several economies, household debt had risen substantially prior to the financial crisis, and the subsequent household deleveraging has strongly affected their macroeconomic performance. At the same time, there are large cross-country differences in the number of households participating in debt markets and in the amounts of debt held. Against this background, this paper uses internationally comparable household-level data for the United States and 11 European economies to decompose cross-country differences in debt holdings into differences due to household characteristics and those arising from different economic environments. The data come from the US Survey of Consumer Finances and the newly available Household Finance and Consumption Survey. The paper finds that US households show the highest prevalence of both collateralized and non-collateralized debt, and have comparatively large amounts of loans outstanding. Differences in household characteristics contribute relatively little to this outcome. In contrast, differences in economic environments have played a major role, with U.S. economic conditions having been much more conducive to debt holdings. The Netherlands are the only European economy with, at least in parts, similarly favourable conditions. |
| Document Type: |
text |
| File Description: |
application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| Relation: |
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.469.1875; http://www.ecb.europa.eu/events/pdf/conferences/131017/papers/Session_2_Christelis.pdf |
| Availability: |
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.469.1875; http://www.ecb.europa.eu/events/pdf/conferences/131017/papers/Session_2_Christelis.pdf |
| Rights: |
Metadata may be used without restrictions as long as the oai identifier remains attached to it. |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.E655D67B |
| Database: |
BASE |