IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/onb/oenbmp/y2007i2b3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Characteristics of Household Debt in Austria

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Beer

    (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration)

  • Martin Schürz

    (Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Economic Analysis Division)

Abstract

The level of household debt has risen in many countries, including Austria. This study examines whether the increased level of debt represents a risk to financial stability. The data used are mainly derived from a survey on households’ financial wealth conducted by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB). Analysis shows that high-income households tend to have more debt than low-income households; the latter, however, are more burdened by their debt. Demand for consumer loans tends to be highest among high-income households with little financial assets. As high debt levels are mostly concentrated among affluent and high-income households, household debt in Austria does not constitute a threat to financial stability. Borrowers with lower incomes and/or low levels of wealth are particularly vulnerable borrowers.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Beer & Martin Schürz, 2007. "Characteristics of Household Debt in Austria," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 2, pages 58-79.
    • Handle: RePEc:onb:oenbmp:y:2007:i:2:b:3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.oenb.at/dam/jcr:e47a4bb1-b332-4983-b506-2e42c0d86614/mop_2007_2_beer_schuerz_tcm16-59016.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Orla May & Merxe Tudela, 2005. "When is mortgage indebtedness a financial burden to British households? A dynamic probit approach," Bank of England working papers 277, Bank of England.
    2. Nathalie Girouard & Mike Kennedy & Christophe André, 2006. "Has the Rise in Debt Made Households More Vulnerable?," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 535, OECD Publishing.
    3. Silvia Magri, 2002. "Italian households' debt: determinants of demand and supply," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 454, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    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. International Monetary Fund, 2011. "United Kingdom: Selected Issues Paper," IMF Staff Country Reports 2011/221, International Monetary Fund.
    2. Beata Swiecka, 2016. "Assessment of the Financial Situation of the Elderly in Poland, with Particular Emphasis on Wealth and Debt (Ocena sytuacji finansowej osob starszych w Polsce ze szczegolnym uwzglednieniem zasobnosci ," Problemy Zarzadzania, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 14(59), pages 118-134.
    3. Lim, Sung Soo & Bone, Matthew, 2022. "Optimism, debt accumulation, and business growth," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    4. Hafizah Hammad Ahmad Khan & Hussin Abdullah & Shamzaeffa Samsudin, 2016. "Modelling the Determinants of Malaysian Household Debt," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 6(4), pages 1468-1473.
    5. Nora Azureen Abdul Rahman & Zunarni Kosim & Siew Goh Yeok, 2018. "The Characteristics of Household Loans in Conventional and Islamic Banks in Malaysia," International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 8(7), pages 531-541, July.
    6. Carmela Aurora Attin� & Francesco Franceschi & Valentina Michelangeli, 2019. "Modelling households� financial vulnerability with consumer credit and mortgage renegotiations," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 531, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    7. Pirmin Fessler & Martin Schürz & Karin Wagner & Beat Weber, 2007. "Financial Capability of Austrian Households," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 3, pages 50-67.

    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. Herrala, Risto & Kauko, Karlo, 2007. "Household loan loss risk in Finland: estimations and simulations with micro data," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 5/2007, Bank of Finland.
    2. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2007_005 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Thorvardur Tjörvi Ólafsson & Karen Á. Vignisdóttir, 2012. "Households’ position in the financial crisis in Iceland. Analysis based on a nationwide household-level database," Economics wp59, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    4. Herrala, Risto & Kauko, Karlo, 2007. "Household loan loss risk in Finland: estimations and simulations with micro data," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 5/2007, Bank of Finland.
    5. Silvia Magri & Valentina Michelangeli & Sabrina Pastorelli & Raffaella Pico, 2019. "The expansion of consumer credit in Italy and in the Euro Area: what are the drivers and the risks?," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 500, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    6. Núria Rodríguez‐Planas, 2018. "Mortgage finance and culture," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(4), pages 786-821, September.
    7. Burcu Duygan-Bump & Charles Grant, 2008. "Household debt repayment behaviour: what role do institutions play?," Supervisory Research and Analysis Working Papers QAU08-3, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    8. Magri, Silvia & Pico, Raffaella, 2011. "The rise of risk-based pricing of mortgage interest rates in Italy," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 1277-1290, May.
    9. Engelbert Stockhammer & Rafael Wildauer, 2016. "Debt-driven growth? Wealth, distribution and demand in OECD countries," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 40(6), pages 1609-1634.
    10. Barbara CAVALLETTI & Corrado LAGAZIO & Daniela VANDONE, 2008. "Il credito al consumo in Italia: benessere economico o fragilita’ finanziaria?," Departmental Working Papers 2008-24, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    11. Douglas Sutherland & Peter Hoeller, 2012. "Debt and Macroeconomic Stability: An Overview of the Literature and Some Empirics," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1006, OECD Publishing.
    12. Georgarakos, Dimitris & Lojschova, Adriana & Ward-Warmedinger, Melanie E., 2009. "Mortgage Indebtedness and Household Financial Distress," IZA Discussion Papers 4631, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Giarda, Elena, 2013. "Persistency of financial distress amongst Italian households: Evidence from dynamic models for binary panel data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 3425-3434.
    14. 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.
    15. Nikolay Hristov & Oliver Hülsewig & Timo Wollmershäuser, 2014. "Financial Frictions and Inflation Differentials in a Monetary Union," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 82(5), pages 549-595, September.
    16. Rodrigo Cifuentes & Felipe Martínez, 2020. "Over-indebtedness in Households: Measurement and Determinants," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 869, Central Bank of Chile.
    17. Piotr Bialowolski & Dorota Weziak‐Bialowolska, 2021. "Good credit, bad credit: The differential role of the sources of debt in life satisfaction," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 967-994, September.
    18. Olomola, Aderbigbe, 2014. "Business operations of agrodealers and their participation in the loan market in Nigeria:," IFPRI discussion papers 1400, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    19. Hein, Eckhard, 2011. "Distribution, ‘Financialisation’ and the Financial and Economic Crisis – Implications for Post-crisis Economic Policies," MPRA Paper 31180, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Athiphat Muthitacharoen, 2015. "Gauging Households’ Debt Tolerance: Evidence from Thailand," PIER Discussion Papers 12., Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research, revised Dec 2015.
    21. Piotr Bialowolski & Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska, 2014. "The Index of Household Financial Condition, Combining Subjective and Objective Indicators: An Appraisal of Italian Households," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 118(1), pages 365-385, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    household debt; borrowing; overindebtedness;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    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:onb:oenbmp:y:2007:i:2:b:3. 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: Rita Glaser-Schwarz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/oenbbat.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.