IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/erc/cypepr/v5y2011i2p57-83.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Borrowing Behaviour of Households: Evidence from the Cyprus Family Expenditure Surveys

Author

Listed:
  • Sofia N. Andreou

    (Economics Research Centre, University of Cyprus)

Abstract

This study investigates how various factors affect households demand for borrowing in Cyprus using data from the Family Expenditure Surveys for the years 2002/03 and 2008/09. The descriptive statistics show that middle income households with a younger age head have relatively high gross debt-to-income ratios; whereas upper income households with an older age head tend to have relatively high gross deposits-to-income ratios. The econometric analysis uses smooth (over the life cycle) income to investigate the extent to which household borrowing at a given point in time conforms to long term expectations about future income. The results conform to theoretical expectation insofar as demand for loans is determined by smooth, not current, income. This can be interpreted as an indication that the borrowing behavior of households in Cyprus is rational. Nevertheless, the results in the paper need to be confirmed by further analysis to also account for the dynamics of the borrowing-saving behavior of households.This will be possible when the Household Finance and Consumption Survey is available in Cyprus, hopefully in the near future.

Suggested Citation

  • Sofia N. Andreou, 2011. "The Borrowing Behaviour of Households: Evidence from the Cyprus Family Expenditure Surveys," Cyprus Economic Policy Review, University of Cyprus, Economics Research Centre, vol. 5(2), pages 57-83, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:erc:cypepr:v:5:y:2011:i:2:p:57-83
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ucy.ac.cy/erc/documents/ANDREOU_57-83.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James J. Heckman, 1976. "The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4, pages 475-492, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Mark Kazarosian, 1997. "Precautionary Savings-A Panel Study," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(2), pages 241-247, May.
    3. Attanasio, Orazio P & Browning, Martin, 1995. "Consumption over the Life Cycle and over the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1118-1137, December.
    4. Georgarakos, Dimitris & Lojschova, Adriana & Ward-Warmedinger, Melanie E., 2009. "Mortgage Indebtedness and Household Financial Distress," IZA Discussion Papers 4631, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. DeJuan, Joseph P. & J. Seater, John, 1999. "The permanent income hypothesis:: Evidence from the consumer expenditure survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 351-376, April.
    6. Campbell, John Y & Mankiw, N Gregory, 1990. "Permanent Income, Current Income, and Consumption," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 8(3), pages 265-279, July.
    7. Deaton, Angus, 1992. "Understanding Consumption," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288244.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Carter, Justin & Moore, Winston & Jackman, Mahalia, 2012. "Is the Magnitude of Household Debt in Barbados a Concern?," MPRA Paper 47791, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Supramono & Iwi Rambu Kareri, 2018. "Compulsive Buying Behavior and Its Impact on Borrowing Habit," Management, University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper, vol. 13(1), pages 3-17.
    3. Cristinel Constantin, 2017. "The Impact Of Incomes And Loans On Households’ Expenditures. Case Of Romania," Journal of Smart Economic Growth, , vol. 2(4), pages 13-22, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shin-Ichi Nishiyama, 2011. "The Cross-Euler Equation Approach to testing for the Liquidity Constraint: Evidence from Macro and Micro Data," TERG Discussion Papers 273, Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University.
    2. Tomas Havranek & Anna Sokolova, 2016. "Do Consumers Really Follow a Rule of Thumb? Three Thousand Estimates from 130 Studies Say "Probably Not"," Working Papers 2016/08, Czech National Bank.
    3. Fulford, Scott L., 2015. "The surprisingly low importance of income uncertainty for precaution," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 151-171.
    4. Hansen, Hermann-Josef, 1996. "Der Einfluß der Zinsen auf den privaten Verbrauch in Deutschland," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 1996,03, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    5. Campbell, John Y. & Cocco, Joao F., 2007. "How do house prices affect consumption? Evidence from micro data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 591-621, April.
    6. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 693-751, September.
    7. Takala, Kari, 1995. "The consumption function revisited : an error-correction model for Finnish consumption," Research Discussion Papers 20/1995, Bank of Finland.
    8. DeJuan, Joseph P. & Seater, John J., 2007. "Testing the cross-section implications of Friedman's permanent income hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 820-849, April.
    9. Laura Serlenga, 2002. "Three Alternative Approaches to Test the Permanent Income Hypothesis in Dynamic Panels," SERIES 0005, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza - Università degli Studi di Bari "Aldo Moro", revised Feb 2002.
    10. repec:zbw:bofrdp:1995_020 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Jonathan Gruber & Aaron Yelowitz, 1999. "Public Health Insurance and Private Savings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(6), pages 1249-1274, December.
    12. Magda Kandil & Ida Mirzaie, 2006. "Consumption and macroeconomic policies: Theory and evidence from developing countries," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 469-491.
    13. Luigi Ventura & Joseph G. Eisenhauer, 2005. "The Relevance of Precautionary Saving," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 6(1), pages 23-35, February.
    14. Johansson-Stenman, Olof, 2010. "Risk aversion and expected utility of consumption over time," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 208-219, January.
    15. Athanasopoulos, George & de Carvalho Guillén, Osmani Teixeira & Issler, João Victor & Vahid, Farshid, 2011. "Model selection, estimation and forecasting in VAR models with short-run and long-run restrictions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 164(1), pages 116-129, September.
    16. Jacobs, Kris, 2000. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1472, Econometric Society.
    17. Patryk Babiarz & Cliff Robb, 2014. "Financial Literacy and Emergency Saving," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 40-50, March.
    18. Sena Durguner, 2018. "Variations in farm consumption and their relationship to income: an empirical investigation of Illinois farm households," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(9), pages 990-1005, February.
    19. Ulrike Malmendier & Leslie Sheng Shen, 2024. "Scarred Consumption," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 322-355, January.
    20. Attanasio, Orazio P & Weber, Guglielmo, 1995. "Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1121-1157, December.
    21. Hochgürtel, S., 1997. "Precautionary Motives and Portfolio Decisions," Other publications TiSEM a6aa05be-cbd8-4f92-ac8e-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.

    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:erc:cypepr:v:5:y:2011:i:2:p:57-83. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Vasiliki Bozani (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erucycy.html .

    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.