D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics

• Household indebtedness risks in the wake of COVID‑19

  Staff Analytical Note 2020-8 Olga Bilyk, Anson T. Y. Ho, Mikael Khan, Geneviève Vallée

  COVID-19 presents challenges for indebted households. We assess these by drawing parallels between pandemics and natural disasters. Taking into account the financial health of the household sector when the pandemic began, we run model simulations to illustrate how payment deferrals and the labour market recovery will affect mortgage defaults.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Climate change, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Credit and credit aggregates, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial stability, Fiscal policy, Housing, Recent economic and financial developments, Sectoral balance sheet JEL Code(s): C, C2, C21, D, D1, D12, D14, E, E2, E24, E27, E6, E62, G, G2, G21, G28, R, R2

• How Do Mortgage Rate Resets Affect Consumer Spending and Debt Repayment? Evidence from Canadian Consumers

  Staff Working Paper 2020-18 Katya Kartashova, Xiaoqing Zhou

  We study the causal effect of mortgage rate changes on consumer spending, debt repayment and defaults during an expansionary and a contractionary monetary policy episode in Canada. We find asymmetric responses of consumer durable spending, deleveraging and defaults. These findings help us to understand household sector response to interest rate changes.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Interest rates, Monetary policy, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, D14, E, E4, E43, E5, E52, G, G2, G21, R, R3, R31

• Identifying Consumer-Welfare Changes when Online Search Platforms Change Their List of Search Results

  Staff Working Paper 2020-5 Ryan Martin

  Online shopping is often guided by search platforms. Consumers type keywords into query boxes, and search platforms deliver a list of products. Consumers' attention is limited, and exhaustive searches are often impractical.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): C, C1, C14, D, D1, D11, D12, D6, D8, D83, L, L4, L40

• The Effect of Mortgage Rate Resets on Debt: Evidence from TransUnion (Part I)

  Staff Analytical Note 2020-2 Katya Kartashova

  This note studies how decreases in mortgage rates affect the behaviour of borrowers in terms of spending on durable goods and repaying debt.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Housing, Interest rates, Monetary policy, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, D14, E, E4, E43, E5, E52, G, G2, G21, R, R3, R31

• Home Equity Extraction and Household Spending in Canada

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-27 Anson T. Y. Ho, Mikael Khan, Monica Mow, Brian Peterson

  We use rich microdata to measure home equity extraction in Canada and track its evolution over time. We find home equity extraction has been rising in recent years and has likely contributed materially to dynamics in household spending.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Financial stability, Housing JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, E, E2, E21, G, G2, G20

• Flight from Safety: How a Change to the Deposit Insurance Limit Affects Households’ Portfolio Allocation

  Staff Working Paper 2019-29 H. Evren Damar, Reint Gropp, Adi Mordel

  Deposit insurance protects depositors from failing banks, thus making insured deposits risk-free. When a deposit insurance limit is increased, some deposits that previously were uninsured become insured, thereby increasing the share of risk-free assets in households’ portfolios. This increase cannot simply be undone by households, because to invest in uninsured deposits, a household must first invest in insured deposits up to the limit. This basic insight is the starting point of the analysis in this paper.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): D, D1, D14, G, G2, G21, G28, L, L5, L51

• Reassessing the Growth of HELOCs in Canada Using New Regulatory Data

  Staff Analytical Note 2019-14 Leila Al-Mqbali, Olga Bilyk, Stefan Caputo, James Younker

  Using new regulatory data on residential secured lending from Canadian banks, we assess the growth rate of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial institutions, Financial stability, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): D, D1, G, G2, G21, G28

• Inequality in Parental Transfers, Borrowing Constraints and Optimal Higher Education Subsidies

  Staff Working Paper 2019-7 Youngmin Park

  This paper studies optimal education subsidies when parental transfers are unequally distributed across students and cannot be publicly observed. After documenting substantial inequality in parental transfers among US college students with similar family resources, I examine its implications for how the education subsidy should vary with schooling level and family resources to minimize inefficiencies generated by borrowing constraints.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Fiscal policy, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D1, D14, D6, D61, D64, D8, D82, I, I2, I22, J, J2, J24

• The Impact of Recent Policy Changes on the Canadian Mortgage Market

  Staff Analytical Note 2018-35 Olga Bilyk, Maria teNyenhuis

  Recent policy changes are having a clear impact on the mortgage market. The number of new, highly indebted borrowers has fallen, and overall mortgage activity has slowed significantly.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial institutions, Interest rates, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): D, D1, E, E4, G, G2, G21, G28

• The Framework for Risk Identification and Assessment

  Technical Report No. 113 Cameron MacDonald, Virginie Traclet

  Risk assessment models are an important component of the Bank’s analytical tool kit for assessing the resilience of the financial system. We describe the Framework for Risk Identification and Assessment (FRIDA), a suite of models developed at the Bank of Canada to quantify the impact of financial stability risks to the broader economy and a range of financial system participants (households, businesses and banks).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Technical reports Topic(s): Economic models, Financial institutions, Financial stability, Housing JEL Code(s): C, C3, C5, C6, C7, D, D1, E, E0, E00, E2, E27, E3, E37, E4, E47, G, G0, G2, G21