IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/16634.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Breaking the Commitment Device: The Effect of Home Equity Withdrawal on Consumption, Saving, and Welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Kovacs, Agnes
  • ,

Abstract

This paper investigates the macroeconomic and welfare implications of permitting home equity withdrawal. We evaluate the trade-off between two opposing views: the benefit of improved consumption smoothing and the potential cost of weakened commitment. To disentangle their relative importance, we estimate a life-cycle model containing both channels. We find that the welfare cost of weakened commitment is substantial: approximately 1.7 times larger than the benefit of improved consumption smoothing. Both channels contribute equally to a 2.5 percentage point reduction in the personal saving rate. Welfare could be improved using state-contingent mortgages that better balance the trade-off between flexibility and commitment.

Suggested Citation

  • Kovacs, Agnes & ,, 2022. "Breaking the Commitment Device: The Effect of Home Equity Withdrawal on Consumption, Saving, and Welfare," CEPR Discussion Papers 16634, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:16634
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP16634
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agnes Kovacs & Hamish Low & Patrick Moran, 2021. "Estimating Temptation And Commitment Over The Life Cycle," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(1), pages 101-139, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Household consumption; Euler equation; Commitment; Mortgage design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D15 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Intertemporal Household Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E71 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on the Macro Economy
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:16634. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.