Crédito e formação de domicílios no Brasil

Abstract

The study seeks to identify how the expansion in Brazilian credit market can relieve the problem of housing shortage by creating more housing. Between 2000 and 2010, the country adopted new institutional rules that allowed an increase in credit supply. Among them, we can mention the fiduciary law and changes in non-earmarked credit regulation that expanded the volume of mortgage. Comparting the data from the 2000 census with the 2010 census, we can see that there was some improvement in the problem of housing shortage, since there was a reduction in the average number of residents per household and per bedroom. One way to verify how the credit market expansion was related to this improvement is to identify how mortgage affects household formation. This study used data from municipalities for the years 2000 and 2010 to try to answer this question empirically. The results indicate that an increase of 100% in outstanding credit increases by about 10% the number of households. This result was obtained using an instrumental variable, since it is possible that credit is an endogenous due to unobserved local characteristics, such as real estate prices. Credit for legal entities was proposed as an instrumental variable, since there are local aspects that may expand credit in general. To support the empirical analysis, it was developed a theoretical model that emphasized the importance of controlling for factors such as income and demographics. In empirical analysis, age has shown to performance a decisive role for determining housing demand. Finally, this result remained robust after controlling for other kinds of local heterogeneity.