IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedkrw/rwp19-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Consumption in the Great Recession: The Financial Distress Channel

Author

Listed:
  • Kartik B. Athreya
  • Ryan Mather
  • Jose Mustre-del-Rio
  • Juan M. Sanchez

Abstract

During the Great Recession, the collapse of consumption across the U.S. varied greatly but systematically with house-price declines. We find that financial distress among U.S. households amplified the sensitivity of consumption to house-price shocks. We uncover two essential facts: (1) the decline in house prices led to an increase in household financial distress prior to the decline in income during the recession, and (2) at the zip-code level, the prevalence of financial distress prior to the recession was positively correlated with house-price declines at the onset of the recession. Using a rich-estimated-dynamic model to measure the financial distress channel, we find that these two facts amplify the aggregate drop in consumption by 7 percent and 45 percent respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Kartik B. Athreya & Ryan Mather & Jose Mustre-del-Rio & Juan M. Sanchez, 2019. "Consumption in the Great Recession: The Financial Distress Channel," Research Working Paper RWP 19-6, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedkrw:rwp19-06
    DOI: 10.18651/RWP2019-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.kansascityfed.org/~/media/files/publicat/reswkpap/pdf/rwp19-06.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "How Much Consumption Insurance beyond Self-Insurance?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 53-87, October.
    2. Cho, Yunho & Morley, James & Singh, Aarti, 2019. "Household Balance Sheets and Consumption Responses to Income Shocks," Working Papers 2019-11, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    3. Kartik Athreya & José Mustre-del-Río & Juan M Sánchez, 2019. "The Persistence of Financial Distress," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(10), pages 3851-3883.
    4. Aditya Aladangady, 2017. "Housing Wealth and Consumption: Evidence from Geographically-Linked Microdata," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(11), pages 3415-3446, November.
    5. Albert Saiz, 2010. "The Geographic Determinants of Housing Supply," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 125(3), pages 1253-1296.
    6. 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.
    7. Igor Livshits & James MacGee & Michèle Tertilt, 2007. "Consumer Bankruptcy: A Fresh Start," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 402-418, March.
    8. Joseph W. Gruber & Robert F. Martin, 2003. "Precautionary savings and the wealth distribution with illiquid durables," International Finance Discussion Papers 773, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    9. Atif Mian & Kamalesh Rao & Amir Sufi, 2013. "Household Balance Sheets, Consumption, and the Economic Slump," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 128(4), pages 1687-1726.
    10. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro, 1987. "Monopolistic Competition and the Effects of Aggregate Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 647-666, September.
    11. David Berger & Veronica Guerrieri & Guido Lorenzoni & Joseph Vavra, 2018. "House Prices and Consumer Spending," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 85(3), pages 1502-1542.
    12. Aaron Hedlund & Carlos Garriga, 2016. "Mortgage Debt, Consumption, and Illiquid Housing Markets in the Great Recession," 2016 Meeting Papers 1564, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2010. "The Great Recession: Lessons from Microeconomic Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 51-56, May.
    14. Jeske, Karsten & Krueger, Dirk & Mitman, Kurt, 2013. "Housing, mortgage bailout guarantees and the macro economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 917-935.
    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. Kartik B. Athreya & Ryan Mather & Jose Mustre-del-Rio & Juan M. Sanchez, 2019. "Household Financial Distress and the Burden of “Aggregate” Shocks," Working Papers 2019-025, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 10 Sep 2020.
    2. Adam M. Guren & Alisdair McKay & Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2018. "Housing Wealth Effects: The Long View," NBER Working Papers 24729, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Serdar Ozkan & Kurt Mitman & Fatih Karahan & Aaron Hedlund, 2016. "Monetary Policy, Heterogeneity and the Housing Channel," 2016 Meeting Papers 663, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Dimitris Christelis & Dimitris Georgarakos & Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri & Maarten van Rooij, 2020. "Heterogeneous Wealth Effects," Working Papers 2020_20, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    5. Guerrieri, Luca & Iacoviello, Matteo, 2017. "Collateral constraints and macroeconomic asymmetries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 28-49.
    6. 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.
    7. Carlos Hatchondo, Juan & Martinez, Leonardo & Sánchez, Juan M., 2015. "Mortgage defaults," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 173-190.
    8. Daminato, Claudio & Pistaferri, Luigi, 2020. "Family labor supply and asset returns," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    9. Davis, Morris A. & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2015. "Housing, Finance, and the Macroeconomy," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.),Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 753-811, Elsevier.
    10. Nuno Paixao, 2018. "Housing Prices and Consumer Spending: The Bank Balance Sheet Channel," 2018 Meeting Papers 1017, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Waxman, Andrew & Liang, Yuanning & Li, Shanjun & Barwick, Panle Jia & Zhao, Meng, 2020. "Tightening belts to buy a home: Consumption responses to rising housing prices in urban China," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    12. Bulent Guler, 2015. "Innovations in Information Technology and the Mortgage Market," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(3), pages 456-483, July.
    13. Kaplan, Greg & Mitman, Kurt & Violante, Giovanni L., 2020. "Non-durable consumption and housing net worth in the Great Recession: Evidence from easily accessible data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    14. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2014. "House Price Gains and U.S. Household Spending from 2002 to 2006," NBER Working Papers 20152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Meta Brown & Sarah Stein & Basit Zafar, 2015. "The Impact of Housing Markets on Consumer Debt: Credit Report Evidence from 1999 to 2012," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(S1), pages 175-213, March.
    16. William Elming & Andreas Ermler, 2016. "Housing equity, saving and debt dynamics over the Great Recession," IFS Working Papers W16/12, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    17. Giroud, Xavier & Mueller, Holger M, 2015. "Firm Leverage and Unemployment during the Great Recession," CEPR Discussion Papers 10539, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Guerrieri, V. & Uhlig, H., 2016. "Housing and Credit Markets," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.),Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1427-1496, Elsevier.
    19. Khorunzhina, Natalia, 2018. "Intratemporal Substitution between Housing and Nondurable Consumption: Evidence from Reinvestment in Housing Stock," MPRA Paper 88667, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Aditya Aladangady, 2014. "Homeowner Balance Sheets and Monetary Policy," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-98, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumption; Credit Card; Mortgage; Bankruptcy; Foreclosure; Delinquency; Financial Distress; Great Recession;

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

    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:fedkrw:rwp19-06. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/frbkcus.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.