IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i7p3977-d781211.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Macroeconomic Determinants of Household Debt in OECD Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Bogdan Andrei Dumitrescu

    (Department of Money and Banking and Center of Financial and Monetary Research CEFIMO, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010961 Bucharest, Romania)

  • Adrian Enciu

    (Department of Money and Banking and Center of Financial and Monetary Research CEFIMO, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010961 Bucharest, Romania)

  • Cătălina Adriana Hândoreanu

    (Department of Money and Banking and Center of Financial and Monetary Research CEFIMO, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010961 Bucharest, Romania)

  • Carmen Obreja

    (Department of Money and Banking and Center of Financial and Monetary Research CEFIMO, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010961 Bucharest, Romania)

  • Florin Blaga

    (Faculty of Finance and Banking, Doctoral School of Finance, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010961 Bucharest, Romania)

Abstract

This article investigates the macroeconomic determinants of household debt in developed economies using a sample comprising 26 OECD countries for the period of 2002q1–2020q4. By resorting to the unconditional quantile regression, we find relevant asymmetries in the response of household debt. According to our results, economic growth leads to lower household debt, but the beneficial effect decreases as the level of household debt increases. Inflation lowers household borrowing only if the level of debt is high. Higher house prices lead to higher household debt, with the impact becoming stronger as the level of debt is higher. Investments go hand in hand with household debt, and higher investments lead to higher levels of borrowing, even when household debt is already high. Mortgage credit interest rates are positively linked with household debt, starting with higher debt levels. A rising unemployment rate leads to lower household debt, but the link becomes weaker as the level of debt increases. Higher public expenditures are generally associated with lower household debt. In addition, we find that household debt exhibits very powerful autoregressive behavior, being difficult to reduce rapidly in the case of need.

Suggested Citation

  • Bogdan Andrei Dumitrescu & Adrian Enciu & Cătălina Adriana Hândoreanu & Carmen Obreja & Florin Blaga, 2022. "Macroeconomic Determinants of Household Debt in OECD Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-14, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:7:p:3977-:d:781211
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3977/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3977/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Bloxham & Christopher Kent, 2009. "Household Indebtedness," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 42(3), pages 327-339, September.
    2. Rivero Wildemauwe, José Ignacio & Sanroman, Graciela, 2022. "Household debt and debt to income: The role of business ownership," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 52-68.
    3. Meng, Xianming & Hoang, Nam T. & Siriwardana, Mahinda, 2013. "The determinants of Australian household debt: A macro level study," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 80-90.
    4. Jun Wen & Chun-Ping Chang, 2015. "Government ideology and the natural disasters: a global investigation," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 78(3), pages 1481-1490, September.
    5. Matteo Iacoviello, 2008. "Household Debt and Income Inequality, 1963-2003," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(5), pages 929-965, August.
    6. Sebastian Barnes & Garry Young, 2003. "The rise in US household debt: assessing its causes and sustainability," Bank of England working papers 206, Bank of England.
    7. Stockhammer, Engelbert & Wildauer, Rafael, 2018. "Expenditure Cascades, Low Interest Rates or Property Booms? Determinants of Household Debt in OECD Countries," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 5(2), pages 85-121, September.
    8. Meniago, Christelle & Mukuddem-Petersen, Janine & Petersen, Mark A. & Mongale, Itumeleng P., 2013. "What causes household debt to increase in South Africa?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 482-492.
    9. Glenn Lauren Moore & Engelbert Stockhammer, 2018. "The drivers of household indebtedness reconsidered: An empirical evaluation of competing arguments on the macroeconomic determinants of household indebtedness in OECD countries," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 547-577, October.
    10. Milton Friedman, 1957. "Introduction to "A Theory of the Consumption Function"," NBER Chapters, in: A Theory of the Consumption Function, pages 1-6, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Merxe Tudela & Garry Young, 2005. "The determinants of household debt and balance sheets in the United Kingdom," Bank of England working papers 266, Bank of England.
    12. Anundsen, André K. & Jansen, Eilev S., 2013. "Self-reinforcing effects between housing prices and credit," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 192-212.
    13. Mian, Atif & Sufi, Amir, 2015. "House of Debt," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226271651, December.
    14. Milton Friedman, 1957. "A Theory of the Consumption Function," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie57-1.
    15. Rodrigo Alfaro & Natalia Gallardo, 2012. "The Determinants of Household Debt Default," Revista de Analisis Economico – Economic Analysis Review, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business, vol. 27(1), pages 55-70, April.
    16. Koenker, Roger, 2004. "Quantile regression for longitudinal data," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 74-89, October.
    17. Piotr Bolibok, 2018. "The Macroeconomic Drivers Of Household Debt-To-Income Ratio: An Evidence Frome The Oecd Countries," Copernican Journal of Finance & Accounting, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, vol. 7(2), pages 29-41.
    18. Wildauer, Rafael & Stockhammer, Engelbert, 2018. "Expenditure cascades, low interest Rates, credit deregulation or property booms? Determinants of household debt in OECD countries," Greenwich Papers in Political Economy 20882, University of Greenwich, Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre.
    19. Sergio Firpo & Nicole M. Fortin & Thomas Lemieux, 2009. "Unconditional Quantile Regressions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 953-973, May.
    20. Glenn Lauren Moore & Engelbert Stockhammer, 2018. "The drivers of household indebtedness re-considered: an empirical evaluation of competing macroeconomic arguments on the determinants of household indebtedness in OECD countries," Working Papers 207, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    21. John Heaton & Deborah Lucas, 2000. "Portfolio Choice and Asset Prices: The Importance of Entrepreneurial Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1163-1198, June.
    22. Levin, Andrew & Lin, Chien-Fu & James Chu, Chia-Shang, 2002. "Unit root tests in panel data: asymptotic and finite-sample properties," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-24, May.
    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. Benyan Tan & Yingzhu Guo & Yan Wu, 2024. "The influence and mechanism of female-headed households on household debt risk: empirical evidence from China," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-15, December.
    2. Ana Romão & Ricardo Barradas, 2024. "Macroeconomic determinants of households' indebtedness in Portugal: What really matters in the era of financialisation?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1), pages 383-401, January.
    3. Sarah Kuypers & Gerlinde Verbist, 2022. "Over-indebtedness and poverty : Patterns across household types and policy effects," Working Paper Research 420, National Bank of Belgium.

    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. Ricardo Barradas & Ines Tomas, 2023. "Household indebtedness in the European Union countries: Going beyond the mainstream interpretation," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 76(304), pages 21-49.
    2. Ana Romão & Ricardo Barradas, 2024. "Macroeconomic determinants of households' indebtedness in Portugal: What really matters in the era of financialisation?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(1), pages 383-401, January.
    3. Ozlem Albayrak, 2020. "Household Consumption, Household Indebtedness, and Inequality in Turkey: A Microeconometric Analysis," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_954, Levy Economics Institute.
    4. Piotr Bolibok, 2018. "The Macroeconomic Drivers Of Household Debt-To-Income Ratio: An Evidence Frome The Oecd Countries," Copernican Journal of Finance & Accounting, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, vol. 7(2), pages 29-41.
    5. Ntebogang Dinah Moroke, 2014. "Household Debts-and Macroeconomic factors Nexus in the United States: A Cointegration and Vector Error Correction Approach," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 6(6), pages 452-465.
    6. Mark Setterfield & Y.K. Kim, 2024. "How financially fragile can households become? Household borrowing, the welfare state, and macroeconomic resilience," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 121-151, June.
    7. Anelisa Nomatye & Andrew Phiri, 2018. "Investigating the Macroeconomic Determinants of Hosehold Debt in South Africa," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 8(2), pages 62-69.
    8. Schulz, Jan & Mayerhoffer, Daniel M., 2021. "A network approach to consumption," BERG Working Paper Series 173, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    9. Kwon, Yujin & Park, Sung Y., 2023. "Modeling an early warning system for household debt risk in Korea: A simple deep learning approach," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    10. Glenn Lauren Moore & Engelbert Stockhammer, 2018. "The drivers of household indebtedness reconsidered: An empirical evaluation of competing arguments on the macroeconomic determinants of household indebtedness in OECD countries," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 547-577, October.
    11. Deng, Xin & Yu, Mingzhe, 2021. "Does the marginal child increase household debt? – Evidence from the new fertility policy in China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    12. Sarah Kuypers & Gerlinde Verbist, 2022. "Over-indebtedness and poverty : Patterns across household types and policy effects," Working Paper Research 420, National Bank of Belgium.
    13. Francesco Ruggeri, 2021. "Household debt, aggregate demand, and instability in a Stock-Flow model," Working Papers 4/21, Sapienza University of Rome, DISS.
    14. Enache Calcedonia, 2022. "Macroeconomic Determinants of Household Indebtedness in Romania: An Econometric Approach," Journal of Social and Economic Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 11(1-2), pages 102-117, December.
    15. Ciarlone, Alessio, 2011. "Housing wealth effect in emerging economies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 399-417.
    16. Till Treeck, 2014. "Did Inequality Cause The U.S. Financial Crisis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 421-448, July.
    17. Miao, Jianjun & Wang, Neng, 2007. "Investment, consumption, and hedging under incomplete markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 608-642, December.
    18. Monica-Lavinia DAN, 2022. "The Impact Of Public-Private Partnership In The Energy Field On Economic Growth," Romanian Journal of Economics, Institute of National Economy, vol. 54(1(63)), pages 24-33, June.
    19. Christian A Belabed & Thomas Theobald & Till van Treeck, 2018. "Income distribution and current account imbalances [Notes on capacity utilisation, distribution and accumulation]," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 42(1), pages 47-94.
    20. Geweke, J. & Joel Horowitz & Pesaran, M.H., 2006. "Econometrics: A Bird’s Eye View," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0655, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

    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:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:7:p:3977-:d:781211. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.