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US household deleveraging following the Great Recession – a model-based estimate of equilibrium debt

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  • Albuquerque Bruno
  • Baumann Ursel
  • Krustev Georgi

    (European Central Bank, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)

Abstract

The balance sheet adjustment in the household sector was a prominent feature of the Great Recession that is widely believed to have held back the cyclical recovery of the US economy. A key question for the US outlook is therefore whether household deleveraging has ended or whether further adjustment is needed. The novelty of this paper is to estimate a time-varying equilibrium household debt-to-income ratio determined by economic fundamentals to examine this question. The paper uses state-level data for household debt from the FRBNY Consumer Credit Panel over the period 1999Q1–2012Q4 and employs the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator developed by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (1999), adjusted for cross-section dependence. The results support the view that, despite significant progress in household balance sheet repair, household deleveraging still had some way to go as of 2012Q4, as the actual debt-to-income-ratio continued to exceed its estimated equilibrium. The baseline conclusions are rather robust to a set of alternative specifications. Going forward, our model suggests that part of this debt gap could, however, be closed by improving economic conditions rather than only by further declines in actual debt. Nevertheless, the normalisation of the monetary policy stance may imply challenges for the deleveraging process by reducing the level of sustainable household debt.

Suggested Citation

  • Albuquerque Bruno & Baumann Ursel & Krustev Georgi, 2015. "US household deleveraging following the Great Recession – a model-based estimate of equilibrium debt," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 1-53, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejmac:v:15:y:2015:i:1:p:53:n:8
    DOI: 10.1515/bejm-2013-0190
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    Cited by:

    1. Bruno Albuquerque & Georgi Krustev, 2018. "Debt Overhang and Deleveraging in the US Household Sector: Gauging the Impact on Consumption," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(2), pages 459-481, June.
    2. Bruno Albuquerque, 2019. "One Size Fits All? Monetary Policy and Asymmetric Household Debt Cycles in U.S. States," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(5), pages 1309-1353, August.
    3. Jeremy Kronick, 2017. "Spendthrifts and Savers: Are Canadians Acting Like they are “House Poor” or “House Rich”?," C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, C.D. Howe Institute, issue 482, June.
    4. Krustev, Georgi, 2019. "The natural rate of interest and the financial cycle," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 193-210.
    5. Lang, Jan Hannes & Welz, Peter, 2018. "Semi-structural credit gap estimation," Working Paper Series 2194, European Central Bank.
    6. Ursel Baumann & Melina Vasardani, 2016. "The slowdown in US productivity growth - what explains it and will it persist?," Working Papers 215, Bank of Greece.

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