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Salience of debt and homebuyers' credit decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Sumit Agarwal

    (National University of Singapore)

  • Artashes Karapetyan

    (The Central Bank of Norway)

Abstract

We show how a regulatory disclosure of hidden debt can eliminate a large mispricing in housing. In a setting where homebuyers must combine several sources of debt, they are biased towards hidden loans, especially if they are young, or have no experience in financial investments or home acquisition. By reducing the mispricing of units with hidden debt, the increased salience of debt benefited homebuyers, particularly those that suffered most from it. An average homebuyer could save $18,000 by acquiring a dwelling with a one standard deviation lower debt. We confirm that lack of salience was the source of the bias, by showing that the regulation nearly eliminated the mispricing.

Suggested Citation

  • Sumit Agarwal & Artashes Karapetyan, 2015. "Salience of debt and homebuyers' credit decisions," Working Paper 2015/21, Norges Bank, revised 20 Nov 2016.
    • Handle: RePEc:bno:worpap:2015_21
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    File URL: http://www.norges-bank.no/en/Published/Papers/Working-Papers/2015/212015/
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Salience; Housing; Cooperatives; Mortgage; Household Finance; Mispricing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

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