Debt Service and Default: Calibrating Macroprudential Policy Using Micro Data

Erlend Nier, Radu Popa, Maral Shamloo and Liviu Voinea

No 2019/182, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: We provide empirical evidence to support the calibration of a limit on household indebtedness levels, in the form of a cap on the debt-service-to-income (DSTI) ratio, in order to reduce the probability of borrower defaults in Romania. The analysis establishes two findings that are new to the literature. First, we show that the relationship between DSTI and probability of default is non-linear, with probability of default responding to increases in DSTI only after a certain threshold. Second, we establish that consumer loan defaults occur at lower levels of DSTI compared to mortgages. Our results support the recent regulation adopted by the National Bank of Romania, limiting the household DSTI at origination to 40 percent for new mortgages and consumer loans. Our counterfactual analysis indicates that had the limit been in place for all the loans in our sample, the probability of default (PD) would have been lower by 23 percent.

Keywords: WP; probability of default; DSTI ratio; DSTI limit; Macroprudential policy; Household credit; Romania; mortgage borrower; borrower characteristic; DSTI range; Loans; Mortgages; Consumer loans; Personal income; Credit; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45
Date: 2019-08-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=48533 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2019/182

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().