Household Debt: Facts, Puzzles, Theories, and Policies

Jonathan Zinman

Annual Review of Economics, 2015, vol. 7, issue 1, 251-276

Abstract: Borrowing decisions affect most households, with large stakes and implications for research subfields as varied as macroeconomics and industrial organization. I review theoretical and empirical work on household debt: its prevalence, level, growth, and composition, as well as various measures of consumer choice and market (in)efficiency, elasticities, and prices, including new evidence on how borrowing heterogeneity affects the distribution of the opportunity cost of consumption. I also discuss opportunities and challenges in policy evaluation. A key takeaway is that puzzles abound, and I highlight numerous avenues for further research.

Keywords: consumer credit; consumer debt; household liabilities; household balance sheet; household finance; consumer finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D14 D18 D82 D83 D91 E21 E32 G01 G02 G11 G21 G23 G28 R31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

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Working Paper: Household Debt: Facts, Puzzles, Theories, and Policies (2014)
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