By 1998, about two-thirds of U.S. households held a bank-type credit card. Despite high interest rates, most revolve credit card debt. The majority of debt revolvers have substantial liquid assets, apparently violating arbitrage. We propose an "accountant-shopper" model that could provide an...

This paper describes participation of Cyprus households in various debts using data from the first (1999) Cyprus Survey of Consumer Finances. It complements our previous paper that described household participation in various types of assets (Haliassos et al., 2001). Debts considered encompass...

This paper describes participation of Cyprus households in financial and real assets using new data from the 1999 Cyprus Survey of Consumer Finances, and compares Cyprus to the United States and four major European countries. Almost 9 out of 10 Cyprus households own some financial asset. After...

We discuss the current state of stockownership among households in major European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK), drawing parallels and contrasts with the US experience. We use detailed microeconomic datasets and explore the extent to which observed...

This paper generalizes Deaton's (1991) approach to saving under borrowing constraints to incorporate portfolio choice. For infinite horizon, impatient consumers, effects of risk aversion, prudence and temperance on portfolios can be different from those obtained in atemporal models. We confirm...

Household-level portfolio data show a tendency of the majority of households in each country to hold no stocks despite a historical expected-return premium on equity relative to riskless assets. This paper first explains why such a tendency constitutes a puzzle in economic theory (the...