Household Debt and Business Cycles Worldwide

Household debt and social interactions

Debt-induced crises, including the subprime, are usually attributed exclusively to supply-side factors. We examine the role of social influences on debt culture, emanating from perceived average income of peers. Utilizing unique information from a household survey representative of the Dutch population, that circumvents the issue of defining the social circle, we consider collateralized, consum...

Income Inequality and Household Debt

Household Debt, Unemployment, and Slow Recoveries∗

This paper analyzes the effect of endogenous unemployment risk on the dynamics of recovery from a liquidity trap. In a liquidity trap, an adverse demand shock raises unemployment and produces a period of slow hiring. Slow hiring further reduces demand, both for standard precautionary reasons and because credit conditions endogenously worsen, reducing households’ ability to borrow and consume. T...

Trust, Consumer Debt, and Household Finance∗

Using a large sample of U.S. individuals, we show that trust is an important determinant of an array of household financial decisions and outcomes including debt management. Individuals with a higher level of trust are less likely to be in debt, miss payments, file bankruptcy, or go through foreclosure. Their households have lower financial leverage, higher retirement savings and assets, and gr...

Anticipated Changes in Household Debt and Consumption

This paper evaluates how anticipated changes in household debt associated with the leveraged purchase of housing a ects consumption. I build a heterogeneous agent model, calibrated to match the distribution of income and wealth within the US economy, in which households are subject to uninsurable income shocks and can save in both liquid and illiquid assets. I show that the marginal propensity ...