The comovement between household loans and real activity

In this paper, we analyze the business cycle behavior of home mortgages and consumer credit and investigate whether the observed changes. and in particular observed changes in the comovement between the loan variables and real activity. are likely to be caused by changes in financial markets. We find that there may have been such a role for changes in markets for consumer credit, but even before the financial crisis hit, the data do not support the hypothesis that changes in mortgage markets reduced the impact of economic shocks on real activity.