E21 - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

• Credit Conditions and Consumption, House Prices and Debt: What Makes Canada Different?

  Staff Working Paper 2015-40 John Muellbauer, Pierre St-Amant, David Williams

  There is widespread agreement that, in the United States, higher house prices raise consumption via collateral or possibly wealth effects. The presence of similar channels in Canada would have important implications for monetary policy transmission.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Domestic demand and components, Economic models, Financial institutions, Financial stability, Financial system regulation and policies, Housing, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E0, E02, E2, E21, E4, E44, G, G2, G21, R, R2, R21, R3, R31

• On the Welfare Cost of Rare Housing Disasters

  Staff Working Paper 2015-26 Shaofeng Xu

  This paper examines the welfare cost of rare housing disasters characterized by large drops in house prices. I construct an overlapping generations general equilibrium model with recursive preferences and housing disaster shocks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Economic models, Housing JEL Code(s): E, E2, E21, E4, E44, G, G1, G11, R, R2, R21

• 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