Household Balance Sheets Research Articles

Differential Rates of Return and Racial Wealth Inequality

Using data on household balance sheets from the Survey of Consumer Finances and data on macroeconomic rates of return from Jorda et al. (2019) we construct two alternative series for household rates of return by race from 1989 to 2016. Our estimates suggest a persistent racial gap in the rate of return on assets between 1 and 4 percentage points. The gap in returns remains even after conditioning on demographic factors, labor market factors, credit history, portfolio composition, household attitudes toward savings, financial literacy, and inheritance---suggestive of a role for discrimination. Recentered influence function (RIF) decompositions indicate between 40% and 53%---1.2 to 1.6 percentage points---of the difference in median returns between Black and White households is unexplained by observable characteristics. A standard Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition suggests that differential rates of return can explain up to 14% of the racial wealth gap at the mean. Finally, our data on differential rates of return allow us to effectively rule out explanations for the racial wealth gap based on myopia or excessive time preference. Given observed series for consumption and rates of return, a standard lifecycle model requires Black households to discount the future less than White households in order to match the data.

Shadow Bank Run, Housing and Credit Market: The Story of a Recession

Abstract This paper assesses the interaction between the housing and credit markets and shadow banks, with the possibility of bank runs. The findings illustrate how a negative TFP shock is amplified by macro-financial and macro-housing channels through household balance sheets, bank balance sheets, and liquidity channels. If the shock renders the shadow banking system insolvent, two equilibria coexist: the no-run equilibrium and the run equilibrium. In this instance, run is a sunspot coordination failure; if households receive a negative signal from fundamentals and stop rolling over deposits to the financial sector, banks are not able to fund their losses with new deposits. So they are forced to liquidate their assets at an endogenous fire sale price. The main finding of this paper is that the model with housing provides a comprehensive account of the consequences of economic crises, namely the house price double-dip, the output downward spiral, and the lengthy recovery period. To eliminate the bank-run equilibrium, this paper proposes macroprudential policy tools in the form of capital adequacy buffers and loan-to-value ratios. Then a welfare analysis is applied to determine the optimal policy mix.

Household balance sheet channels of monetary policy: A back of the envelope calculation for the euro area

This paper formulates a back of the envelope approach to study the effects of monetary policy on household consumption expenditures. We analyze several transmission mechanisms operating through direct, partial equilibrium channels—intertemporal substitution and net interest rate exposure—and indirect, general equilibrium channels—net nominal exposure, as well as wealth, collateral and labor income channels. The strength of these forces varies across households depending on their marginal propensities to consume, their balance sheet composition, the sensitivity of their own earnings to fluctuations in aggregate labor income, and the responsiveness of aggregate earnings, asset prices and inflation to monetary policy shocks. We quantify all these channels in the euro area by combining micro data from the HFCS and the EU-LFS with structural VARs estimated on aggregate time series. We find that the indirect labor income channel and the housing wealth effect are strong drivers of the aggregate consumption response to monetary policy and explain the cross-country heterogeneity in these responses.

Indebtedness and Spending: What Happens When the Music Stops?

We analyse the effect of shocks to housing wealth and income before and after the Great Recession. We combine datasets containing information on expenditure, income, wealth and debt in a synthetic panel to understand how household indebtedness affects the response to income and wealth shocks. We find evidence for both a housing wealth effect and income shocks depressing household consumption during the crisis in Ireland. The long recovery of consumption is also related to high levels of indebtedness at the onset of the crisis. Households who entered the crisis with more debt are significantly more sensitive to changes in their income. In this way, household balance sheets can be an important amplification mechanism for aggregate shocks. JEL Classification: D14, D31, E21, H31

MPC Heterogeneity and Household Balance Sheets

MPC Heterogeneity and Household Balance Sheets

Mortgage Regulation and Financial Vulnerability at the Household Level

We evaluate the impact of mortgage regulation on credit volumes, household balance sheets and the reaction to adverse economic shocks. Using a comprehensive dataset of all housing transactions in Norway matched with buyers' balance sheet information from official tax records, we identify causal effects of mortgage loan-to-value (LTV) limits. Our results show that LTV-requirements have substantial effects on credit volumes, especially on the extensive margin. As a result, such requirements contribute to dampening aggregate credit growth. We find that affected households lower their debt uptake and face lower interest expenses, thereby reducing their vulnerability to adverse shocks. However, affected households also deplete liquid assets when purchasing a home, in order to meet the new requirement. This negative effect on liquid savings persists in the years following the house purchase, suggesting that the impact on financial vulnerability at the household level is in fact ambiguous. We illustrate this further by documenting that households affected by the regulation are more likely to sell their home when becoming unemployed compared to non-affected households.

India’s Inward (Re)Turn: Is it Warranted? Will it Work?

India is turning inward. Domestic demand is assuming primacy over export-orientation and trade restrictions are increasing, reversing a 3-decade trend. This shift is based on three misconceptions, which we dispel: that India’s domestic market size is big, India’s growth has been based on domestic not export markets, and export prospects are dim because the world is deglobalizing. In fact, India still enjoys large export opportunities, especially in labour-intensive sectors such as clothing and footwear. But exploiting these opportunities requires more openness and more global integration. Abandoning export orientation is thus akin to killing the goose that lays golden eggs. Indeed, given constraints on public, corporate and household balance sheets, abandoning export orientation is akin to killing the only goose that can lay eggs.

The Effectiveness of Borrower-Based Macroprudential Measures: A Quantitative Analysis for Slovakia

We develop a semi-structural quantitative framework that combines micro and macroeconomic data to assess the effectiveness of combinations of borrower-based macroprudential measures in Slovakia. We expand on the integrated dynamic household balance sheet model of Gross and Poblacion (2017) by introducing an endogenous loan granting feature, in turn to quantify the potential (ex-ante) impact of macroprudential measures on resilience parameters, compared with a counterfactual no-policy scenario, under adverse macroeconomic conditions. We conclude that (1) borrower-based measures can noticeably improve household and bank resilience to macroeconomic downturns, in particular when multiple measures are applied; (2) those measures tend to complement each other, as the impact of individual instruments is transmitted via different channels; and (3) the resilience benefits are more sizeable if the measures effectively limit the accumulation of risks before an economic downturn occurs, suggesting that an early, preemptive implementation of borrower-based measures is indeed warranted.

Spend Today or Spend Tomorrow? The Role of Inflation Expectations in Consumer Behaviour

This paper investigates whether Italian households’ actual expenditure and willingness to buy durables (cars) are related to their inflation expectations. In a high-inflation regime, as in the early 1990s, consumers with higher inflation expectations tend to have higher current than future expenditure, suggesting that an inter-temporal substitution mechanism is at work. Conversely, in a low-inflation environment, such as the one after the global financial crisis, higher expected inflation lowers households’ purchasing power and, thereby, spending (income effect). We also find that the composition of household balance sheets matters for explaining how inflation expectations shape spending behaviour.

Consumption Heterogeneity: Micro Drivers and Macro Implications

This paper explores the microfoundations of consumption models and quantifies the macro implications of consumption heterogeneity. We propose a new empirical method to estimate the response of consumption to permanent and transitory income shocks for different groups of households. We then apply this method to administrative data from Denmark. The large sample size, along with detailed household balance sheet information, allows us to finely divide the population along relevant dimensions. We find that households that stand to lose from an interest rate hike are significantly more responsive to income shocks than those that stand to gain. Following a 1-percentage-point interest rate increase, we estimate that consumption growth decreases by a 1/4 percentage point through this interest rate exposure channel alone, making this channel substantially larger than the intertemporal substitution channel that is at the core of representative agent New Keynesian models.

Unsecured Credit Supply Risk and Bond Prices

Changes in credit supply induce large and frequent variations in households' access to unsecured debt. They generate a novel financial precautionary motive, which compounds the classical motive associated with idiosyncratic income risk, as borrowers accumulate risk-free bonds to hedge against them. Using a structural model, I estimate that this motive is an important driver of Treasury rates over the business cycle. It explains the historically low level of real rates in the last decade despite consumption growth, solving a post-Great Recession risk-free rate puzzle. It is also critical for the volatility and comovement of household balance sheet and macroeconomic moments.

The Household Finance Landscape in Emerging Economies

We survey the household finance landscape in emerging economies. We first present statistics on household balance sheets from official microsurveys in countries constituting 45% of the global population: China, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Africa. We contrast these patterns with those in data from advanced economies. We then survey the nascent literature on household finance in emerging economies and discuss areas of overlap with the better-established literature on household finance in advanced economies, as well as the large body of literature on development finance. We highlight useful directions for future research.

Follow the Money! Combining Household and Firm-Level Evidence to Unravel the Tax Elasticity of Dividends

We estimate the tax elasticity of dividends using two recent French reforms: a hike in the dividend tax rate followed, five years later, by a cut. To follow the cash movements within the balance sheets of households and firms caused by these reforms, we use newly-accessible personal and corporate tax registries. Following the tax increase, the elasticity of dividends equals four and there is no shifting towards other personal income categories. We find instead an increase in companies’ spending. After the tax decrease, payouts revert to their initial level, but not enough to offset the amounts received during the high-tax period.

MPC Heterogeneity and Household Balance Sheets

Using Norwegian administrative data, we study how sizable lottery prizes affect household expenditure and savings. Expenditure responses (MPCs) spike in the year of winning, with a mean estimate of 0.35, and thereafter fall markedly. Controlling for all items on the household balance sheet and characteristics such as education and age, MPCs vary with the amount won and liquid assets only. Shock size matters: The MPC among the 25 percent winning least is twice as high as among the 25 percent winning most. Many households are wealthy, illiquid and have high MPCs, consistent with 2-asset models of consumer choice.

Social Debt Overhang and Under-Consumption

Debt owed to family and friends (DOFF) is a major component of household and entrepreneurial finance, particularly in developing countries. However, such informal finance carries with it an implicit covenant that can cause households to forgo durable-good consumption. This is because durable-good consumption can be perceived by the lender as a mis-use of funds and can result in social sanctions or debt recall. This paper uses China's Vehicle Scrappage Program (VSP) as a laboratory in which to study the causal link between DOFF and consumption. Merging survey data on Chinese household balance sheets with bid prices from China's online used-car markets, I find that DOFF on the balance sheet significantly reduces the probability that eligible households participate in the VSP and trade in their clunkers for new cars. Further, I find that this negative effect of DOFF on consumption is significantly mitigated by the presence of formal features such as a written contract, pre-determined debt repayment schedule, or positive interest rate. Together these results suggest that developing more formal channels for household finance can lead to increases in consumption. This is particularly important for developing countries such as China, where low consumption rates impede economic growth.

Trends in Household Portfolio Composition

We use data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to explore how household asset portfolios in the United States have evolved from 1989 to 2016. Throughout this period, two key assets—housing and financial market assets—have driven the aggregate household balance sheet evolution. However, aggregates mask great heterogeneity in balance sheet composition across the wealth distribution, and most families hold a relatively small share of assets in financial markets and larger shares in housing and other nonfinancial assets. We also describe the typical life cycle asset accumulation processes among low, middle, and high-income families which—though varying dramatically by level—are quite similar. Finally, we use household balance sheets to describe how financial vulnerability has changed over time.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Leaning Against the Wind

Setting interest rates higher than macroeconomic conditions would warrant due to concerns about financial instability is called ‘leaning against the wind’. Many recent papers have attempted to quantify and evaluate the effects of this policy. This paper summarises this research and applies the approach to Australia. The papers we survey see the benefit of leaning against the wind as avoiding financial crises, such as those that affected Australia in 1990 or other countries in 2008. Most of the international research finds that interest rates have too small an effect on the probability of a crisis for this benefit to be worth higher unemployment. Using Australian data, we find similar results. We estimate the costs of leaning against the wind to be three to eight times larger than the benefit of avoiding financial crises. However, research has not yet quantified the increased resilience of household balance sheets, which may be an extra benefit of leaning against the wind.

What Do Big Data Tell Us about Why People Take Gig Economy Jobs?

The gig economy is widely regarded to be a source of secondary or temporary income, but little is known about economic activity outside of the gig economy. Using data from a large, online personal finance application, I document the evolution of non-gig income and household balance sheets surrounding the participation decision for gig economy jobs. This simple analysis reveals striking pretrends in income and assets. In addition to providing insight into the reasons why households enter the gig economy, these findings have potentially important implications for the external validity of previous studies focusing on gig economy activity only.

Pension Fund ALM - Can Pension Funds Stabilize Funding Levels and Improve Long-Term Return by Hedging Longevity Risk?

In this paper we analyze the impact hedging longevity risk can have on a pension fund’s funding ratio volatility and ALM strategy. Our model captures all relevant aspects of the ALM problem and is calibrated to industry statistics; however, we’ve sacrificed model complexity to make the solution more intuitive and presentable. Our main conclusion is that hedging longevity risk creates additional risk budget to be put towards more rewarding asset allocation strategies, thereby improving the overall ALM outcome of the modelled pension fund. We show that at representative parameters for the risk and return on the balance sheet, and a range of realistic hedge prices, executing longevity hedges elevates the Efficient Frontier across all reasonable risk budgets. Therefore, implementing a longevity hedging strategy can improve the fund’s Sharpe Ratio and ALM outlook considerably. This is especially true for funds with a low risk budget, e.g. when the funding ratio is close to 105%. Our results are consistent with earlier work on this topic by Cocco and Gomes (2012), who demonstrate the benefits of financial assets designed to hedge shocks to the survival probabilities in a life cycle model with longevity risk. Our analysis differs since we focus on the pension fund rather than the household balance sheet, use a more extensive model for the financial market, have an explicit definition of the hedge instrument and use market information on the pricing of longevity hedges which lacks in.

Stress testing household balance sheets in Luxembourg

This paper uses individual household data from Luxembourg to evaluate how severe economic conditions could affect bank exposure to the household sector. Using data from a representative survey, information on household income, expenses and liquid assets are used to calculate household-specific probabilities of default (PD), aggregate bank exposure at default (EAD) and aggregate bank loss given default (LGD). The exercise is repeated with scenarios combining severe but plausible shocks to real estate prices, bonds and stocks, household income and interest rates. Compared to the baseline scenario, the LGD rises by a multiple of eight, reaching 4.2% of total bank exposure to the household sector. The high-stress scenario also generates a relatively high percentage of defaults among socio-economically disadvantaged households (i.e. low net wealth, low income, low education, three or more dependent children). Our main conclusion is that bank losses appear to be quite sensitive to financial stress, despite three mitigating factors in Luxembourg: indebted households tend to hold liquid assets that can help smooth shocks, household leverage tends to decline rapidly once mortgages have been serviced several years, and loan-to-value ratios at origination appear not to be excessive.