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Household debt repayment behaviour: what role do institutions play?

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Author Info
Burcu Duygan-Bump
Charles Grant
Abstract

Household debt repayment behavior has been understudied, especially empirically, despite the heightened debate on rising household debt, personal bankruptcy filings, and arrears. In this paper, we use data from the European Community Household Panel to analyze the determinants of household debt arrears. The paper's primary aim is to understand the role of institutions in household arrears by exploiting cross-country differences and the panel nature of the data set. We start our analysis by showing that falling into arrears has important long-term consequences for employment, self-employment, home-ownership, and health. Next, we show how arrears themselves are the result of adverse events that affect a household, such as bad health or unemployment. Finally, we show that there are important cross-country differences in how households react to these adverse events. These differences can be partly explained by local financial and judicial institutions. Indicators covering contract enforcement and the degree of credit information sharing are used to capture the costs associated with default. In particular, we show that while adverse shocks are highly important, the extent to which they affect household debt repayment depends crucially on the penalty for defaulting.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in its series Quantitative Analysis Unit Working Paper with number QUA08-3.

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Date of creation: 2008
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbqu:qua08-3

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Related research
Keywords: Consumer credit ; Bankruptcy;

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References listed on IDEAS
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  2. Sarah Bridges & Richard Disney, 2004. "Use of credit and arrears on debt among low-income families in the United Kingdom," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 25(1), pages 1-25, March.
  3. Scott Fay & Erik Hurst & Michelle J. White, 2002. "The Household Bankruptcy Decision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(3), pages 706-718, June. [Downloadable!]
  4. Satyajit Chatterjee & Dean Corbae & Makoto Nakajima & Jose-Victor Rios-Rull, 2007. "A quantitative theory of unsecured consumer credit with risk of default," Working Papers 07-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli & Mario Padula & Marco Pagano, 2004. "Financial Market Integration and Economic Growth in the EU," CSEF Working Papers 118, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Boheim, Rene & Taylor, Mark P., 2000. "My Home Was My Castle: Evictions and Repossessions in Britain," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 287-319, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Timothy J. Kehoe & David K. Levine, 2000. "Liquidity Constrained vs. Debt Constrained Markets," Levine's Working Paper Archive 14, David K. Levine. [Downloadable!]
  8. Mario Padula & Charles Grant, 2007. "Bounds on repayment behavior: evidence for the consumer credit market," Working Papers 2007_26, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari", Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  9. Igor Livshits & James MacGee & Michèle Tertilt, 2007. "Accounting for the Rise in Consumer Bankruptcies," NBER Working Papers 13363, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Jappelli, Tullio & Pagano, Marco & Bianco, Magda, 2005. "Courts and Banks: Effects of Judicial Enforcement on Credit Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(2), pages 223-44, April.
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  11. Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1998. "Law and Finance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1113-1155, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Dean R. Hyslop, 1999. "State Dependence, Serial Correlation and Heterogeneity in Intertemporal Labor Force Participation of Married Women," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(6), pages 1255-1294, November.
  13. Simeon Djankov & Caralee McLiesh & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "Private Credit in 129 Countries," NBER Working Papers 11078, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Charles Grant & Winfried Koeniger, 2005. "Redistributive Taxation and Personal Bankruptcy in US States," IZA Discussion Papers 1805, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  15. David B. Gross, 2002. "An Empirical Analysis of Personal Bankruptcy and Delinquency," Review of Financial Studies, Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 319-347, March.
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