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Household Leverage and the Recession of 2007 to 2009

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  • Atif R. Mian
  • Amir Sufi

Abstract

We show that household leverage as of 2006 is a powerful statistical predictor of the severity of the 2007 to 2009 recession across U.S. counties. Counties in the U.S. that experienced a large increase in household leverage from 2002 to 2006 showed a sharp relative decline in durable consumption starting in the third quarter of 2006 – a full year before the official beginning of the recession in the fourth quarter of 2007. Similarly, counties with the highest reliance on credit card borrowing reduced durable consumption by significantly more following the financial crisis of the fall of 2008. Overall, our statistical model shows that household leverage growth and dependence on credit card borrowing as of 2006 explain a large fraction of the overall consumer default, house price, unemployment, residential investment, and durable consumption patterns during the recession. Our findings suggest that a focus on household finance may help elucidate the sources macroeconomic fluctuations.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 15896.

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Date of creation: Apr 2010
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15896

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Cited by:
  1. Georges Dionne & Geneviève Gauthier & Khemais Hammami & Mathieu Maurice & Jean-Guy Simonato, 2010. "A Reduced Form Model of Default Spreads with Markov-Switching Macroeconomic Factors," Cahiers de recherche 1042, CIRPEE.
  2. Eleni Iliopulos & Thepthida Sopraseuth, 2011. "L'intermédiation financière dans l'analyse macroéconomique : le défi de la crise," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 11046, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
  3. Òscar Jordà & Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor, 2011. "When credit bites back: leverage, business cycles, and crises," Working Paper Series 2011-27, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
  4. Paolo Gelain & Kevin J. Lansing & Caterina Mendicino, 2012. "House prices, credit growth, and excess volatility: implications for monetary and macroprudential policy," Working Paper Series 2012-11, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
  5. Zheng Liu & Pengfei Wang & Tao Zha, 2011. "Land-price dynamics and macroeconomic fluctuations," NBER Working Papers 17045, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  6. Janet Currie & Erdal Tekin, 2011. "Is there a Link Between Foreclosure and Health?," NBER Working Papers 17310, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2012. "The Effects of Fiscal Stimulus: Evidence from the 2009 Cash for Clunkers Program," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1107-1142.
  8. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2011. "Consumers and the economy, part II: Household debt and the weak U.S. recovery," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Jan 18.
  9. Amir Sufi, 2012. "Detecting "Bad" Leverage," NBER Chapters, in: Risk Topography: Systemic Risk and Macro Modeling National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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