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Did Consumers Want Less Debt? Consumer Credit Demand Versus Supply in the Wake of the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis

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  • Reint Gropp
  • John Krainer
  • Elizabeth Laderman

Abstract

We explore the sources of household balance sheet adjustment following the collapse of the housing market in 2006. First, we use microdata from the Federal Reserve Board?s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey to document that banks cumulatively tightened consumer lending standards more in counties that experienced a house price boom in the mid-2000s than in nonboom counties. We then use the idea that renters, unlike homeowners, did not experience an adverse wealth shock when the housing market collapsed to examine the relative importance of two explanations for the observed deleveraging and the sluggish pickup in consumption after 2008. First, households may have optimally adjusted to lower wealth by reducing their demand for debt and implicitly, their demand for consumption. Alternatively, banks may have been more reluctant to lend in areas with pronounced real estate declines. Our evidence is consistent with the second explanation. Renters with low risk scores, compared to homeowners in the same markets, reduced their levels of nonmortgage debt and credit card debt more in counties where house prices fell more. The contrast suggests that the observed reductions in aggregate borrowing were more driven by cutbacks in the provision of credit than by a demand-based response to lower housing wealth.

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  • Reint Gropp & John Krainer & Elizabeth Laderman, 2014. "Did Consumers Want Less Debt? Consumer Credit Demand Versus Supply in the Wake of the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis," Working Paper Series 2014-8, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2014-08
    DOI: 10.24148/wp2014-08
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    Cited by:

    1. S. Boragan Aruoba & Ronel Elul & Sebnem Kalemli Ozcan, 2022. "Housing Wealth and Consumption: The Role of Heterogeneous Credit Constraints," Working Papers 22-34, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    2. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Marianna Kudlyak & John Mondragon & Olivier Coibion, 2014. "Does Greater Inequality Lead to More Household Borrowing? New Evidence from Household Data," 2014 Meeting Papers 402, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Marianna Kudlyak & John Mondragon, 0. "Greater Inequality and Household Borrowing: New Evidence from Household Data," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(6), pages 2922-2971.
    4. Daniel I. García, 2018. "Employment in the Great Recession : How Important Were Household Credit Supply Shocks?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-074, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Steven Laufer & Andrew D. Paciorek, 2016. "The Effects of Mortgage Credit Availability : Evidence from Minimum Credit Score Lending Rules," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-098, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Saadi, Vahid, 2019. "Mortgage supply and the US housing boom: The role of the Community Reinvestment Act," SAFE Working Paper Series 155, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2019.
    7. Wix, Carlo & Schüwer, Ulrich, 2016. "Monetary Policy and Bank Lending: A Natural Experiment from the US Mortgage Market," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145943, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Albuquerque, Bruno & Baumann, Ursel & Seitz, Franz, 2016. "What does money and credit tell us about real activity in the United States?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 328-347.
    9. Tripathy, Jagdish, 2017. "Cross-border effects of regulatory spillovers: evidence from Mexico," Bank of England working papers 684, Bank of England.
    10. Saadi, Vahid, 2016. "Mortgage supply and the US housing boom: The role of the community reinvestment act," IWH Discussion Papers 32/2016, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    11. Daniel García, 2020. "Employment in the Great Recession: How Important Were Household Credit Supply Shocks?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(1), pages 165-203, February.
    12. Arora, Vipin, 2015. "Oil prices and the US economy: Where is the boom?," Economics Discussion Papers 2015-48, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    13. Glancy, David, 2021. "Housing bust, bank lending & employment: Evidence from multimarket banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    14. Christophe André, 2016. "Household debt in OECD countries: stylised facts and policy issues," Chapters from NBP Conference Publications, in: Hanna Augustyniak & Jacek Łaszek & Krzysztof Olszewski & Joanna Waszczuk (ed.), Papers presented during the Narodowy Bank Polski Workshop: Recent trends in the real estate market and its analysis - 2015 edition, chapter 2, pages v1, 33-85, Narodowy Bank Polski.
    15. Tripathy, Jagdish, 2020. "Cross-border effects of regulatory spillovers: Evidence from Mexico," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

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