Using comparable survey data from twelve European countries from 1994 to 2001 we investigate households’ attitudes towards mortgage indebtedness. We find that a given debt burden creates much higher distress in countries with fewer mortgage holders relative to countries where a significant...

Using comparable survey data from twelve European countries from 1994 to 2001 we investigate households’ attitudes towards mortgage indebtedness. We find that a given debt burden creates much higher distress in countries with fewer mortgage holders relative to countries where a significant...

Using a dedicated set of questions in the 2014 Luxembourg Household Finance and Consumption Survey (LU-HFCS), we show that a substantial share of households contributes their own labour to the acquisition of their main residence. These contributions help households faced with credit constraints,...

We examine the role of trust in households' decisions to hold a bank account and to switch to a new bank. We explore Italian household-level data that contain restricted information on the banks that the households are doing business with, as well as measures of trust in the households' main...

This paper studies the determinants of being unbanked in the euro area and the United States as well as the effects of being unbanked on wealth accumulation. Based on household-level data from the euro area Household Finance and Consumption Survey and the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finance, it...

This paper uses representative individual household data from Luxembourg to evaluate how severe economic conditions could affect bank exposure to the household sector. Information on household income, expenses and liquid assets are used to calculate household-specific probabilities of default...

How much discretion should the monetary authority have in setting its policy? This question is analyzed in an economy with an agreed-upon social welfare function that depends on the randomly fluctuating state of the economy. The monetary authority has private information about that state. In the...

The analysis of the macroeconomic impact of fiscal policies in the euro area has been traditionally limited by the absence of quarterly fiscal data. To overcome this problem, we provide two new databases in this paper. Firstly, we construct a quarterly database of euro area fiscal variables for...

This paper studies welfare consequences of a soft borrowing constraint on sovereign debt which is modeled as a proportional fine per unit of debt exceeding some reference value. Debt is the result of myopic fiscal policy where the government is assumed to have a smaller discount factor than the...

The analysis of the macroeconomic impact of fiscal policies in the euro area has been traditionally limited by the absence of quarterly fiscal data. To overcome this problem, we provide two new databases in this paper. Firstly, we construct a quarterly database of euro area fiscal variables for...