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The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 95 No. 4 2013

House Price Fluctuations: The Role of Housing Wealth as Borrowing Collateral

Daniel Cooper

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Abstract

Rising house prices affect household spending by either loosening a household's lifetime budget constraint (pure wealth effect) or the household's borrowing constraint so that consumption rises toward the level implied by the consumption Euler equation (borrowing collateral effect). The empirical findings in this paper are consistent with house price appreciation affecting household spending through the borrowing collateral channel and not the pure wealth effect channel. The consumption of potentially borrowing constrained households increases between [dollar]0.06 and [dollar]0.18 per dollar increase in their housing equity, while the consumption of unconstrained households is little changed.

DOI
10.1162/rest_a_00323
Volume
95
Issue
4
Pages
1183-1197
Language
en
Sources
crossref openalex