IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2023-73.html

Borrowing and Spending in the Money: Debt Substitution and the Cash-out Refinance Channel of Monetary Policy

Author

Abstract

We show that the strong negative effect of higher mortgage rates on cash-out refinancing reflects substitution into other borrowing products, not large changes in total new household borrowing. We exploit an exogenous increase in long-term rates to show that, in the cross-section of outstanding mortgage rates, changes in cash-out and alternative borrowing are offsetting. Additionally, we instrument using monetary policy surprises to show that, over the period from 2006-2021, changes in cash-out refinancing are offset by alternative borrowing. Our results suggest that debt substitution substantially weakens the cash-out refinance channel of monetary policy and reduces its path-dependence.

Suggested Citation

  • Elliot Anenberg & Tess C. Scharlemann & Eileen van Straelen, 2023. "Borrowing and Spending in the Money: Debt Substitution and the Cash-out Refinance Channel of Monetary Policy," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-073, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2023-73
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2023.073
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2023073pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/FEDS.2023.073?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anthony A. Defusco, 2018. "Homeowner Borrowing and Housing Collateral: New Evidence from Expiring Price Controls," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(2), pages 523-573, April.
    2. Bu, Chunya & Rogers, John & Wu, Wenbin, 2021. "A unified measure of Fed monetary policy shocks," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 331-349.
    3. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante, 2014. "A Model of the Consumption Response to Fiscal Stimulus Payments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(4), pages 1199-1239, July.
    4. Joshua Abel & Andreas Fuster, 2021. "How Do Mortgage Refinances Affect Debt, Default, and Spending? Evidence from HARP," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 254-291, April.
    5. Hurst, Erik & Stafford, Frank, 2004. "Home Is Where the Equity Is: Mortgage Refinancing and Household Consumption," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(6), pages 985-1014, December.
    6. Sumit Agarwal & Wenlan Qian, 2017. "Access to Home Equity and Consumption: Evidence from a Policy Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(1), pages 40-52, March.
    7. Andreas Fuster & Basit Zafar, 2021. "The Sensitivity of Housing Demand to Financing Conditions: Evidence from a Survey," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 231-265, February.
    8. Mark Gertler & Peter Karadi, 2015. "Monetary Policy Surprises, Credit Costs, and Economic Activity," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 44-76, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Koeniger, Winfried & Lennartz, Benedikt & Ramelet, Marc-Antoine, 2022. "On the transmission of monetary policy to the housing market," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    2. Neil Bhutta & Benjamin J. Keys, 2016. "Interest Rates and Equity Extraction during the Housing Boom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(7), pages 1742-1774, July.
    3. Atalay, Kadir & Edwards, Rebecca, 2022. "House prices, housing wealth and financial well-being," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    4. Slacalek, Jiri & Tristani, Oreste & Violante, Giovanni L., 2020. "Household balance sheet channels of monetary policy: A back of the envelope calculation for the euro area," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    5. Martin Beraja & Andreas Fuster & Erik Hurst & Joseph Vavra, 2019. "Regional Heterogeneity and the Refinancing Channel of Monetary Policy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 109-183.
    6. Marco Di Maggio & Amir Kermani & Kaveh Majlesi, 2020. "Stock Market Returns and Consumption," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(6), pages 3175-3219, December.
    7. Julian Di Giovanni & Galina Hale, 2022. "Stock Market Spillovers via the Global Production Network: Transmission of U.S. Monetary Policy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(6), pages 3373-3421, December.
    8. Mucai Lin & Zhiwu Hong & Linlin Niu, 2026. "Silent News in China's Monetary Policy Announcements: Dual-Shock Identification with Ordered Heteroskedasticity," Working Papers 2026-02-01, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    9. Rella, Giacomo, 2025. "Time-varying interactions between monetary and housing credit policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    10. Scott Fulford & Joanna Stavins, 2022. "Does getting a mortgage affect consumer credit use?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 955-991, September.
    11. Katya Kartashova & Xiaoqing Zhou, 2025. "How Do Mortgage Rate Resets Affect Consumer Spending and Debt Repayment? Evidence from Canadian Consumers," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 57(5), pages 1167-1210, August.
    12. Xu, Yonghao & Meng, Juanjuan & Zhang, Yu & Koo, Jeffrey, 2025. "Present bias, mental budget constraint, and the payday consumption cycle," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    13. Sumit Agarwal & Jessica Pan & Wenlan Qian, 2020. "Age of Decision: Pension Savings Withdrawal and Consumption and Debt Response," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 43-69, January.
    14. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    15. Amina Enkhbold, 2023. "Monetary Policy Transmission, Bank Market Power, and Wholesale Funding Reliance," Staff Working Papers 23-35, Bank of Canada.
    16. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2018. "Identification in Macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 59-86, Summer.
    17. Grodecka-Messi, Anna & Li, Jieying & Zhang, Xin, 2025. "Riding the Housing Wave: Home Equity Withdrawal and Consumer Debt Composition," Working Paper Series 452, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    18. Michal Franta & Jan Libich, 2024. "Holding the economy by the tail: analysis of short- and long-run macroeconomic risks," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 66(4), pages 1443-1489, April.
    19. Benjamin L. Collier & Daniel A. Hartley & Benjamin J. Keys & Jing Xian Ng, 2024. "Credit When You Need It," NBER Working Papers 32845, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Lake, A., 2020. "Behavioural Finance at Home: Testing Deviations of House Prices from their Fundamental Values," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 20104, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:fip:fedgfe:2023-73. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.