{"title":"Household finances, debt overhang and consumption patterns","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.econmod.2024.106836","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper studies the effect of household debt on consumption throughout the business cycle. We use household-level data for Spain in a period, 2002–2017, characterized by significant fluctuations in leverage, consumption, and asset prices. We find that high levels of debt have a negative effect on consumption during recession periods, while previous debt accumulation does not significantly influence consumption. When considering heterogeneities across types of debt, we observe that households adjust their spending faster in response to debt not associated with real estate assets. By exploiting explicit information on household credit constraints, we find no evidence suggesting that they play a significant role in shaping the debt-consumption nexus. We conclude that in a situation of high leverage and financial stress, debt overhang decreases household consumption. In this context, policies aimed at preventing households from leveraging excessively during expansions, and policies providing debt relief during recessions, can help mitigate consumption shocks.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48419,"journal":{"name":"Economic Modelling","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economic Modelling","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999324001937","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper studies the effect of household debt on consumption throughout the business cycle. We use household-level data for Spain in a period, 2002–2017, characterized by significant fluctuations in leverage, consumption, and asset prices. We find that high levels of debt have a negative effect on consumption during recession periods, while previous debt accumulation does not significantly influence consumption. When considering heterogeneities across types of debt, we observe that households adjust their spending faster in response to debt not associated with real estate assets. By exploiting explicit information on household credit constraints, we find no evidence suggesting that they play a significant role in shaping the debt-consumption nexus. We conclude that in a situation of high leverage and financial stress, debt overhang decreases household consumption. In this context, policies aimed at preventing households from leveraging excessively during expansions, and policies providing debt relief during recessions, can help mitigate consumption shocks.
期刊介绍：
Economic Modelling fills a major gap in the economics literature, providing a single source of both theoretical and applied papers on economic modelling. The journal prime objective is to provide an international review of the state-of-the-art in economic modelling. Economic Modelling publishes the complete versions of many large-scale models of industrially advanced economies which have been developed for policy analysis. Examples are the Bank of England Model and the US Federal Reserve Board Model which had hitherto been unpublished. As individual models are revised and updated, the journal publishes subsequent papers dealing with these revisions, so keeping its readers as up to date as possible.
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：
京公网安备 11010802042870号
