This paper uses microdata from the EU-SILC (Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) to generate structural information for the euro area on the incidence of household indebtedness and of the burden to service debt. It distinguishes this incidence according to relevant characteristics such as...

We test the interest rate sensitivity of subprime credit card borrowers using a unique panel data set from a UK credit card company. What is novel about our contribution is that we were given details of a randomized interest rate experiment conducted by the lender between October 2006 and...

Using a new nationally representative survey of financial capability and experience in the UK and Ireland, I investigate the key factors that cause individuals to experience financial distress. In this context, a key area that I focus on is whether individuals? behavioural traits, such as their...

We study how and to what extent private households are affected by the recent financial crisis and how their financial decisions are inuenced by this shock. Our analysis reveals that individuals with low levels of financial literacy are less likely to have invested in the stock market and thus...

We study taxable wealth in unique Swedish administrative data, annually following a large sample of households over a period of almost 40 years. The main data limitation is non-observability of wealth for those below the tax exemption level. This implies that much of the focus of the paper is on...

Financing pensions in the EU is a challenge. Many EU countries introduced private pension schemes to compensate declining public pension levels due to reforms made necessary by demographic change. In 2001, Germany introduced the Riester pension. Ten years after introduction the prevalence rate...

This paper introduces the Luxembourg Household Finance and Consumption Survey (LU-HFCS), presents its background and aim, the field phase, the data treatment, including editing, imputation, and anonymisation, and some basic descriptive findings. The estimated average (median) total net wealth of...

This study investigates whether and how the crisis in 2008/2009 affects households' risk attitudes, subjective risk and return expectations, and planned financial risk taking using the German SAVE study. Households' wealth change from end-2007 to end-2009 is not found to have an effect. However,...

We study the role of household saving behaviour, of individual motives for saving and that of perceived credit constraints in 15 Euro Area countries. The empirical analysis is based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, a new harmonized data set collecting detailed information on...