E21 - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

• Exploring Differences in Household Debt Across Euro Area Countries and the United States

  Staff Working Paper 2015-16 Dimitris Christelis, Michael Ehrmann, Dimitris Georgarakos

  We use internationally comparable household-level data for ten euro area economies and the United States to investigate cross-country differences in debt holdings and the potential of debt overhang.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): D, D1, D12, E, E2, E21, G, G1, G11

• Does Financial Integration Increase Welfare? Evidence from International Household-Level Data

  Staff Working Paper 2015-4 Christian Friedrich

  Despite a vast empirical literature that assesses the impact of financial integration on the economy, evidence of substantial welfare gains from consumption risk sharing remains elusive. While maintaining the usual cross-country perspective of the literature, this paper explicitly accounts for household heterogeneity and thus relaxes three restrictive assumptions that have featured prominently in the past.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International financial markets, International topics, Labour markets, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, F, F3, I, I3, I31

• Banks’ Financial Distress, Lending Supply and Consumption Expenditure

  Staff Working Paper 2014-7 H. Evren Damar, Reint Gropp, Adi Mordel

  The paper employs a unique identification strategy that links survey data on household consumption expenditure to bank-level data in order to estimate the effects of bank financial distress on consumer credit and consumption expenditures.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Domestic demand and components, Financial institutions JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E4, E44, G, G0, G01, G2, G21

• An Equilibrium Analysis of the Rise in House Prices and Mortgage Debt

  Staff Working Paper 2013-9 Shaofeng Xu

  This paper examines the contributions of population aging, mortgage innovation and historically low interest rates to the sharp rise in U.S. house prices and mortgage debt between 1994 and 2005.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Credit and credit aggregates, Economic models JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E4, E44, G, G1, G11, R, R2, R21
• February 21, 2013

  The U.S. Recovery from the Great Recession: A Story of Debt and Deleveraging

  Bank of Canada Review - Winter 2012-2013 Brady Lavender, Nicolas Parent

  The U.S. recovery from the Great Recession has been slow relative to other postwar-era recoveries in the United States. Encouraged by loose lending standards in the pre-crisis period, U.S. households took on unsustainable amounts of debt, making them vulnerable to adverse shocks. Subsequently, a considerable drop in asset prices forced households to repair their balance sheets. While there has been progress in household deleveraging, the government sector now needs to delever, which will restrain growth over the next few years.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, International topics, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E6, E60

• House Prices, Consumption and the Role of Non-Mortgage Debt

  Staff Working Paper 2013-2 Katya Kartashova, Ben Tomlin

  This paper examines the relationship between house prices and consumption, through the use of debt. Using unique Canadian household-level data that reports the uses of debt, we begin by looking at the relationship between house prices and debt.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Domestic demand and components JEL Code(s): D, D1, D10, D14, D3, D31, E, E2, E21
• February 23, 2012

  Household Borrowing and Spending in Canada

  Bank of Canada Review - Winter 2011-2012 Jeannine Bailliu, Katya Kartashova, Césaire Meh

  Understanding how much of the increased debt load of Canadian households has been used to finance household spending on consumption and home renovation is important for the conduct of monetary policy. In this article, the authors use a comprehensive data set that provides information on the uses of debt by Canadian households. They first present some facts regarding the evolution of Canadian household debt over the period from 1999 to 2010, emphasizing the increased importance of debt flows that are secured by housing. They then explore how Canadian households have used their borrowed funds over the same period, and assess the role of these borrowed funds in financing total consumption and spending on home renovation. Finally, they examine the possible effects of a decline in house prices on consumption when housing equity is used as collateral against household indebtedness.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Domestic demand and components, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E5, E51, H, H3, H31

• The Propagation of U.S. Shocks to Canada: Understanding the Role of Real-Financial Linkages

  Staff Working Paper 2010-40 Kimberly Beaton, René Lalonde, Stephen Snudden

  This paper examines the transmission of U.S. real and financial shocks to Canada and, in particular, the role of financial frictions in affecting the transmission of these shocks. These questions are addressed within the Bank of Canada's Global Economy Model (de Resende et al. forthcoming), a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with an active banking sector and a detailed role for financial frictions.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E27, E3, E32, F, F3, F36, F4, F40

• A Model of Housing Stock for Canada

  Staff Working Paper 2010-19 David Dupuis, Yi Zheng

  Using an error-correction model (ECM) framework, the authors attempt to quantify the degree of disequilibrium in Canadian housing stock over the period 1961–2008 for the national aggregate and over 1981–2008 for the provinces.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Domestic demand and components JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, J, J0, J00

• Prospects for Global Current Account Rebalancing

  Staff Discussion Paper 2010-4 Kimberly Beaton, Carlos De Resende, René Lalonde, Stephen Snudden

  The authors use the Bank of Canada's version of the Global Economy Model, a multi-country, multi-sector dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model with an active banking system (the BoC-GEM-FIN), to study the evolution of global current account balances following the recent global financial crisis.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Balance of payments and components, Business fluctuations and cycles, International topics, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, F, F0, F01, F3, F32