The Microdynamics of the Household Balance Sheet in a Boom-Bust Housing Cycle

Abstract

In this paper we provide what we believe to be the first evidence on the nature of gross debt flows across consumers. We find that the aggregate dynamics in the consumer debt market are largely explained by the behavior of consumers with mortgage debt, and the behavior of such consumers is found to be sensitive to changes in housing market conditions. Our results show that there is a significant amount of consumer-level heterogeneity as evidenced by large amounts of simultaneous debt creation and debt destruction throughout the economic cycle. Finally, we find that there are important asymmetries in the debt adjustment process: whereas consumers are able to take on large amounts of additional debt quickly, short of defaulting debt is discharged very slowly. This slow deleveraging process may help explain why total consumer debt levels have been so slow to recover in the years following the Great Recession.