IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hfa/wpaper/23-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mortgage Debt and the Consumption Response to Fiscal Transfers

Author

Listed:
  • Ross Batzer

    (Federal Housing Finance Agency)

Abstract

This paper studies how mortgage debt shapes the consumption response to fiscal transfers using an incomplete markets model with housing and defaultable longterm debt. The model is estimated to match the share of households in the data whose spending is constrained by low liquidity. Among homeowners, the model predicts those with mortgage debt have an average response to transfers six times larger than those without debt. Spending responses are found to be poorly correlated with earnings. Unlike a standard model without mortgage debt, the model with mortgages predicts restricting transfers based on income may substantially reduce their efficacy in increasing aggregate spending.

Suggested Citation

  • Ross Batzer, 2023. "Mortgage Debt and the Consumption Response to Fiscal Transfers," FHFA Staff Working Papers 23-07, Federal Housing Finance Agency.
    • Handle: RePEc:hfa:wpaper:23-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.fhfa.gov/document/wp2307.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.fhfa.gov/research/papers/wp2307
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan Halket & Lars Nesheim & Florian Oswald, 2020. "The Housing Stock, Housing Prices, And User Costs: The Roles Of Location, Structure, And Unobserved Quality," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1777-1814, November.
    2. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko, 2007. "Arbitrage in Housing Markets," NBER Working Papers 13704, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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.
    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. Carlos Garriga & Aaron Hedlund, 2019. "Crises in the Housing Market: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Lessons," Working Papers 2019-33, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    2. Allen Head & Huw Lloyd‐Ellis & Derek Stacey, 2023. "Heterogeneity, Frictional Assignment, And Home‐Ownership," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(3), pages 1265-1308, August.
    3. Tal Gross & Timothy J. Layton & Daniel Prinz, 2022. "The Liquidity Sensitivity of Healthcare Consumption: Evidence from Social Security Payments," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 175-190, June.
    4. Pierre Mabille, 2019. "Aggregate Precautionary Savings Motives," 2019 Meeting Papers 344, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. John Carter Braxton & Kyle F. Herkenhoff & Jonathan Rothbaum & Lawrence Schmidt, 2021. "Changing Income Risk across the US Skill Distribution: Evidence from a Generalized Kalman Filter," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 55, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    6. Andreas Fagereng & Luigi Guiso & Davide Malacrino & Luigi Pistaferri, 2020. "Heterogeneity and Persistence in Returns to Wealth," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(1), pages 115-170, January.
    7. Crump, Richard K. & Eusepi, Stefano & Tambalotti, Andrea & Topa, Giorgio, 2022. "Subjective intertemporal substitution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 118-133.
    8. Röhrs, Sigrid & Winter, Christoph, 2017. "Reducing government debt in the presence of inequality," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-20.
    9. Matthew Rognlie & Andrei Shleifer & Alp Simsek, 2018. "Investment Hangover and the Great Recession," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 113-153, April.
    10. Richard Blundell & Luigi Pistaferri & Itay Saporta-Eksten, 2016. "Consumption Inequality and Family Labor Supply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(2), pages 387-435, February.
    11. Marco Di Maggio & Amir Kermani & Christopher Palmer, 2016. "How Quantitative Easing Works: Evidence on the Refinancing Channel," NBER Working Papers 22638, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Giovanni L. Violante & Greg Kaplan, 2022. "The Marginal Propensity to Consume in Heterogeneous Agent Models," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 747-775, August.
    13. François Gerard & Joana Naritomi, 2021. "Job Displacement Insurance and (the Lack of) Consumption-Smoothing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(3), pages 899-942, March.
    14. Ampudia, Miguel & Pavlickova, Akmaral & Slacalek, Jiri & Vogel, Edgar, 2016. "Household heterogeneity in the euro area since the onset of the Great Recession," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 181-197.
    15. Don Schlagenhauf & Bryan Noeth & Carlos Garriga, 2015. "Aggregate and Distributional Dynamics of Consumer Credit in the U. S," 2015 Meeting Papers 1095, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Ferriere, Axelle, 2020. "Comments on “Capital income taxation with housing”," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    17. Valerie A. Ramey, 2019. "Ten Years after the Financial Crisis: What Have We Learned from the Renaissance in Fiscal Research?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(2), pages 89-114, Spring.
    18. Martin Micheli & Jan Rouwendal & Jasper Dekkers, 2019. "Border Effects in House Prices," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 47(3), pages 757-783, September.
    19. Jeppe Druedahl & Alessandro Martinello, 2022. "Long-Run Saving Dynamics: Evidence from Unexpected Inheritances," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(5), pages 1079-1095, December.
    20. Banzhaf, H. Spencer & Farooque, Omar, 2013. "Interjurisdictional housing prices and spatial amenities: Which measures of housing prices reflect local public goods?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 635-648.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    mortgages; macro-policy; stimulus; marginal propensity to consume;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • 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:hfa:wpaper:23-07. 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: William Doerner (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fhfaaus.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.