Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/154072 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
ECB Working Paper No. 1639
Publisher: 
European Central Bank (ECB), Frankfurt a. M.
Abstract: 
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we present an up-to-date assessment of the differences across euro area countries in the distributions of various measures of debt conditional on household characteristics. We consider three different outcomes: the probability of holding debt, the amount of debt held and, in the case of secured debt, the interest rate paid on the main mortgage. Second, we examine the role of legal and economic institutions in accounting for these differences. We use data from the first wave of a new survey of household finances, the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, to achieve these aims. We find that the patterns of secured and unsecured debt outcomes vary markedly across countries. Among all the institutions considered the length of asset repossession periods best accounts for the features of the distribution of secured debt. In countries with longer repossession periods, the fraction of people who borrow is smaller, the youngest group of households borrow lower amounts (conditional on borrowing), and the mortgage interest rates paid by low-income households are higher. Regulatory loan-to-value ratios, the taxation of mortgages and the prevalence of interest-only or fixed rate mortgages deliver less robust results.
Subjects: 
Financial literacy
fixed rate mortgages
household debt and interest rate distributions
loan-to-value ratios
taxation
time to foreclose
JEL: 
D14
G21
G28
K35
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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