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Philip Du Caju
- 24 May 2016
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1908Details
- Abstract
- We study how unemployment affects the over-indebtedness of households using the new European Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). First, we assess the role of different labor market statuses (i.e. employed, unemployed, disabled, retired, etc.) and other household characteristics (i.e. demographics, housing status, household wealth and income, etc.) to determine the likelihood of over-indebtedness. We explore these relationships both at the Euro area level and through country-specific regressions. This approach captures country-specific institutional effects concerning all the different factors which can explain household indebtedness in its most severe form. We also examine the role that each country
- JEL Code
- D14 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Household Saving; Personal Finance
D91 : Microeconomics→Intertemporal Choice→Intertemporal Household Choice, Life Cycle Models and Saving
J12 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Demographic Economics→Marriage, Marital Dissolution, Family Structure, Domestic Abuse - Network
- Household Finance and Consumption Network (HFCN)
- 20 February 2014
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1639Details
- Abstract
- The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we present an up-to-date assessment of the differences across euro area countries in the distributions of various measures of debt conditional on household characteristics. We consider three different outcomes: the probability of holding debt, the amount of debt held and, in the case of secured debt, the interest rate paid on the main mortgage. Second, we examine the role of legal and economic institutions in accounting for these differences. We use data from the first wave of a new survey of household finances, the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, to achieve these aims. We find that the patterns of secured and unsecured debt outcomes vary markedly across countries. Among all the institutions considered the length of asset repossession periods best accounts for the features of the distribution of secured debt. In countries with longer repossession periods, the fraction of people who borrow is smaller, the youngest group of households borrow lower amounts (conditional on borrowing), and the mortgage interest rates paid by low-income households are higher. Regulatory loan-to-value ratios, the taxation of mortgages and the prevalence of interest-only or fixed rate mortgages deliver less robust results.
- JEL Code
- D14 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Household Saving; Personal Finance
G21 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Banks, Depository Institutions, Micro Finance Institutions, Mortgages
G28 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Government Policy and Regulation
K35 : Law and Economics→Other Substantive Areas of Law→Personal Bankruptcy Law - Network
- Household Finance and Consumption Network (HFCN)
- 8 April 2011
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1325Details
- Abstract
- In the last decades, international trade has increased between industrialised countries and between high- and low-wage countries. This important change has raised questions on how international trade affects the labour market. In this spirit, this paper aims to investigate the impact of international trade on wage dispersion in a small open economy. It is one of the few to: i) use detailed matched employer-employee data to compute industry wage premia and disaggregated industry level panel data to examine the impact of changes in exports and imports on changes in wage differentials, ii) examine the impact of imports according to the country of origin. Looking at the export side, we find a positive effect of exports on the industry wage premium. The results also show that import penetration from low
- JEL Code
- F16 : International Economics→Trade→Trade and Labor Market Interactions
J31 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials - Network
- Wage dynamics network
- 25 June 2010
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1213Details
- Abstract
- This paper presents estimates based on individual data of downward nominal and real wage rigidities for thirteen sectors in Belgium, Denmark, Spain and Portugal. Our methodology follows the approach recently developed for the International Wage Flexibility Project, whereby resistance to nominal and real wage cuts is measured through departures of observed individual wage change histograms from an estimated counter factual wage change distribution that would have prevailed in the absence of rigidity. We evaluate the role of worker and firm characteristics in shaping wage rigidities. We also confront our estimates of wage rigidities to structural features of the labour markets studied, such as the wage bargaining level, variable pay policy and the degree of product market competition. We find that the use of firm-level collective agreements in countries with rather centralized wage formation reduces the degree of real wage rigidity. This finding suggests that some degree of decentralization within highly centralized countries allows firms to adjust wages downwards, when business conditions turn bad.
- JEL Code
- J31 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials
- Network
- Wage dynamics network
- 21 April 2010
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1182Details
- Abstract
- This paper documents the existence and main patterns of inter-industry wage differentials across a large number of industries for 8 EU countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, and Spain) at two points in time (in general 1995 and 2002) and explores possible explanations for these patterns. The analysis uses the European Structure of Earnings Survey (SES), an internationally harmonised matched employer-employee dataset, to estimate inter-industry wage differentials conditional on a rich set of employee, employer and job characteristics. After investigating the possibility that unobservable employee characteristics lie behind the conditional wage differentials, a hypothesis which cannot be accepted, the paper investigates the role of institutional, industry structure and industry performance characteristics in explaining inter-industry wage differentials. The results suggest that inter-industry wage differentials are consistent with rent sharing mechanisms and that rent sharing is more likely in industries with firm-level collective agreements and with higher collective agreement coverage.
- JEL Code
- J31 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials
J41 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Particular Labor Markets→Labor Contracts
J51 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Labor?Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining→Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects - Network
- Wage dynamics network
- 12 November 2009
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1106