FSRC - Financial System Research Center

• Debt Overhang and Deleveraging in the US Household Sector: Gauging the Impact on Consumption

  Staff Working Paper 2015-47 Bruno Albuquerque, Georgi Krustev

  Using a novel dataset for the US states, this paper examines whether household debt and the protracted debt deleveraging help explain the dismal performance of US consumption since 2007, in the aftermath of the housing bubble.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C1, C13, C2, C23, C5, C52, D, D1, D12, H, H3, H31

• Credit Cards: Disentangling the Dual Use of Borrowing and Spending

  Staff Analytical Note 2015-3 Olga Bilyk, Brian Peterson

  Over the past 15 years, aggregate credit card balances have been increasing, except for a brief spell in the aftermath of the 2007–09 financial crisis. Determining whether the growing balances are due to increased usage of credit cards as a method of payment or whether they reflect increased short-term borrowing is challenging because aggregate balances are snapshots of charges on credit cards before households make their monthly payments.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial stability

• Tractable Term Structure Models

  Staff Working Paper 2015-46 Bruno Feunou, Jean-Sébastien Fontaine, Anh Le, Christian Lundblad

  We introduce a new framework that facilitates term structure modeling with both positive interest rates and flexible time-series dynamics but that is also tractable, meaning amenable to quick and robust estimation.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Interest rates, International financial markets, International topics, Monetary policy and uncertainty, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12