D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics
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What do high-frequency expenditure network data reveal about spending and inflation during COVID‑19?
The official consumer price index (CPI) inflation measure, based on a fixed basket set before the COVID 19 pandemic, may not fully reflect what consumers are currently experiencing. We partnered with Statistics Canada to construct a more representative index for the pandemic with weights based on real-time transaction and survey data. -
The Interplay of Financial Education, Financial Literacy, Financial Inclusion and Financial Stability: Any Lessons for the Current Big Tech Era?
The objective of this paper is twofold. First, we assess whether financial education might be a suitable tool to promote the financial inclusion opportunities that big techs provide. Second, we study how this potential financial inclusion could impact financial stability. -
Household indebtedness risks in the wake of COVID‑19
COVID-19 presents challenges for indebted households. We assess these by drawing parallels between pandemics and natural disasters. Taking into account the financial health of the household sector when the pandemic began, we run model simulations to illustrate how payment deferrals and the labour market recovery will affect mortgage defaults. -
How Do Mortgage Rate Resets Affect Consumer Spending and Debt Repayment? Evidence from Canadian Consumers
We study the causal effect of mortgage rate changes on consumer spending, debt repayment and defaults during an expansionary and a contractionary monetary policy episode in Canada. We find asymmetric responses of consumer durable spending, deleveraging and defaults. These findings help us to understand household sector response to interest rate changes. -
Identifying Consumer-Welfare Changes when Online Search Platforms Change Their List of Search Results
Online shopping is often guided by search platforms. Consumers type keywords into query boxes, and search platforms deliver a list of products. Consumers' attention is limited, and exhaustive searches are often impractical. -
The Effect of Mortgage Rate Resets on Debt: Evidence from TransUnion (Part I)
This note studies how decreases in mortgage rates affect the behaviour of borrowers in terms of spending on durable goods and repaying debt. -
Home Equity Extraction and Household Spending in Canada
We use rich microdata to measure home equity extraction in Canada and track its evolution over time. We find home equity extraction has been rising in recent years and has likely contributed materially to dynamics in household spending. -
Flight from Safety: How a Change to the Deposit Insurance Limit Affects Households’ Portfolio Allocation
Deposit insurance protects depositors from failing banks, thus making insured deposits risk-free. When a deposit insurance limit is increased, some deposits that previously were uninsured become insured, thereby increasing the share of risk-free assets in households’ portfolios. This increase cannot simply be undone by households, because to invest in uninsured deposits, a household must first invest in insured deposits up to the limit. This basic insight is the starting point of the analysis in this paper. -
Reassessing the Growth of HELOCs in Canada Using New Regulatory Data
Using new regulatory data on residential secured lending from Canadian banks, we assess the growth rate of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs).