Fiscal policy as credit policy: Homeownership subsidization and the household debt boom

Abstract

This paper revisits the policy drivers of the substantial household credit boom experienced in recent decades. While existing work has typically pointed to the retreat of the state, deregulating and substituting public safety nets by private credit, this paper brings the focus to the active use by governments of ‘fiscal policy as credit policy’ through homeownership subsidization. In this context, the paper introduces a new unique dataset of 550 homeownership subsidies adjustments in 51 advanced and emerging countries since 1990, which brings two important contributions. First, I show that these fiscal subsidies have been increasingly used since the 1990s and significantly contributed to the easy credit stance up to the global financial crisis in both advanced and emerging countries. Second, using panel fixed effects regressions, I find that these subsidies, and notably mortgage interest deductibility, are indeed significantly associated with household/mortgage credit expansion, with crucial distributional and financial stability implications.