Household leverage, re-leveraging and spending behaviour

家庭杠杆、再杠杆和支出行为

• 批准号: ES/S001867/1
• 负责人: Peter Levell
• 金额: $ 21.24万
• 依托单位: Institute for Fiscal Studies
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FS001867%2F1
• 关键词: Household; leverage; re; leveraging; spending

Two factors make movements in house prices especially important for consumption spending and the wider economy. The first is that it represents a significant proportion of households' wealth.According to the ONS, in the UK, property accounts for three quarters of households' aggregate marketable net wealth. The second factor is leverage. The vast majority of UK households purchase their first home with substantial credit, leading to a large difference between households gross and net asset positions. Under standard mortgage contracts households' liabilities do not change as house prices rises and fall, meaning that for leveraged households, price movements can lead to significant changes in a households' net housing wealth. As a result, leverage can magnify the effects of economic shocks on households' overall balance sheets, with potentially important implications for their willingness to spend as well as their access to credit.In the proposed research, we will provide new empirical evidence on the extent to which UK households adjusted their leverage over periods of rising and falling house prices, as well as on how leverage affects consumer spending decisions in the response to changes in their housing wealth. We will also examine how consumers may have acted over the period of the recession had different macro-prudential policies been introduced pre-crisis. Our empirical strategy requires both detailed and comprehensive spending micro-data and data on household balance sheets. Since no single, large dataset containing this information exists in the UK, we will combine available information contained in the ESRC's secondary dataset Understanding Society/the British Household Panel Survey and the ONS's Living Costs and Food Survey using two-sample methods.Our research will proceed through three stages. In the first stage, we will investigate the degree to which households' may have re-leveraged (de-leveraged) in response to house price increases (falls). When house prices rise, household loan to value ratios will mechanically fall, reducing the risk and return on household portfolios. Households may either accept this reduction in their leverage, or they may act to counteract it by actively increasing their borrowing. We will empirically examine household responses to investigate the extent of active re-leveraging in the UK.In the second stage, we will not only investigate whether more leveraged households increase their spending by more in response to house price increases, but also how they adjust their spending. This latter question requires use of the Living Costs and Food Survey. This latter question is important because, as we discuss in our Case for Support, it is important for testing various hypotheses around the mechanisms through which leverage may amplify the effect of house price changes. Our approach will allow for the fact that leverage is a choice variable that is potentially correlated with other confounding variables. In the third stage of our research we will apply our findings to make constructive recommendations about government policy, paying particular attention to the design of macro-prudential policies aimed at preventing excessive leverage growth among households. To do this we will not only draw on our empirical findings from the work set out above, but also examine the response of consumers to specific macro-prudential policies through a dynamic structural model of consumer behaviour. The construction of this model would allow us to simulate the responses of consumers to different policy regimes and directly quantify their potential impact. This would include for example an assessment of the relative impacts of restrictions on loan-to-value and loan-to-income ratios on consumer spending and welfare. This final part of the project would draw on some of the investigators' deep experience in the programming, estimation and calibration of such models.

有两个因素使得房价变动对消费支出和整体经济尤为重要。首先，它代表了家庭财富的很大一部分。根据英国国家统计局的数据，在英国，房地产占家庭可交易净财富总额的四分之三。第二个因素是杠杆。绝大多数英国家庭用大量信贷购买了他们的第一套住房，导致家庭总资产和净资产头寸之间存在巨大差异。在标准的抵押贷款合同下，家庭的负债不会随着房价的涨跌而变化，这意味着对于杠杆化的家庭来说，价格变动会导致家庭的净住房财富发生重大变化。因此，杠杆可以放大经济冲击对家庭整体资产负债表的影响，对他们的消费意愿和获得信贷的机会可能产生重要影响。在拟议的研究中，我们将提供新的经验证据，证明英国家庭在房价上涨和下跌期间调整其杠杆的程度，以及杠杆如何影响消费者支出决策以应对其住房财富的变化。我们还将研究如果在危机前引入不同的宏观审慎政策，消费者在经济衰退期间可能采取的行动。我们的实证策略需要详细而全面的消费微观数据和家庭资产负债表数据。由于英国不存在包含这些信息的单一大型数据集，我们将使用双样本方法将ESRC的二级数据集“了解社会”/“英国家庭小组调查”和国家统计局的“生活成本和食品调查”中包含的可用信息结合起来。我们的研究将分三个阶段进行。在第一阶段，我们将调查家庭在应对房价上涨（下跌）时可能进行再杠杆化（去杠杆化）的程度。当房价上涨时，家庭贷款与价值比率将机械地下降，从而降低家庭投资组合的风险和回报。家庭要么接受杠杆的降低，要么通过积极增加借贷来抵消杠杆的降低。我们将通过实证检验家庭的反应来调查英国积极再杠杆化的程度。在第二阶段，我们不仅要研究高杠杆家庭是否会更多地增加支出以应对房价上涨，还要研究他们如何调整支出。后一个问题需要使用生活成本和食物调查。后一个问题很重要，因为正如我们在“支持案例”中讨论的那样，它对于围绕杠杆可能放大房价变化影响的机制测试各种假设很重要。我们的方法将考虑到这样一个事实，即杠杆是一个选择变量，它可能与其他混杂变量相关。在研究的第三阶段，我们将运用我们的研究结果对政府政策提出建设性的建议，特别关注旨在防止家庭杠杆过度增长的宏观审慎政策的设计。为了做到这一点，我们不仅将借鉴我们从上述工作中得到的经验发现，而且还将通过消费者行为的动态结构模型来研究消费者对具体宏观审慎政策的反应。该模型的构建将使我们能够模拟消费者对不同政策制度的反应，并直接量化其潜在影响。例如，这将包括评估限制贷款价值比和贷款收入比对消费者支出和福利的相对影响。项目的最后一部分将利用研究人员在这些模型的编程、估计和校准方面的一些丰富经验。

项目成果

House Price Rises and Borrowing to Invest

房价上涨和借贷投资

• DOI: 10.1920/wp.ifs.2020.220
• 作者: Low H