Research Field(s): Housing Macroeconomics

Staff analytical notes

The Effect of Mortgage Rate Resets on Debt: Evidence from TransUnion (Part I)

Staff Analytical Note 2020-2 Katya Kartashova
This note studies how decreases in mortgage rates affect the behaviour of borrowers in terms of spending on durable goods and repaying debt.

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Staff discussion papers

Heterogeneity and Monetary Policy: A Thematic Review

The theory that rich economic diversity of businesses and households both affects and is shaped by economy-wide fluctuations has strong implications for monetary policy. This review places these insights in a Canadian context.

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Staff working papers

Gazing at r-star: A Hysteresis Perspective

Staff Working Paper 2023-5 Paul Beaudry, Katya Kartashova, Césaire Meh
Many explanations for the decline in real interest rates over the last 30 years point to the role that population aging or rising income inequality plays in increasing the long-run aggregate demand for assets. Notwithstanding the importance of such factors, the starting point of this paper is to show that the major change driving household asset demand over this period is instead an increased desire—for a given age and income level—to hold assets.

How Do Mortgage Rate Resets Affect Consumer Spending and Debt Repayment? Evidence from Canadian Consumers

Staff Working Paper 2020-18 Katya Kartashova, Xiaoqing Zhou
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.

Improving Public Equity Markets? No Pain, No Gain

Staff Working Paper 2014-41 Katya Kartashova
This paper quantifies the effects of improving public equity markets on macroeconomic aggregates and welfare. I use an open-economy extension of Angeletos (2007), where entrepreneurs face idiosyncratic productivity risk in privately held firms.

House Prices, Consumption and the Role of Non-Mortgage Debt

Staff Working Paper 2013-2 Katya Kartashova, Ben Tomlin
This paper examines the relationship between house prices and consumption, through the use of debt. Using unique Canadian household-level data that reports the uses of debt, we begin by looking at the relationship between house prices and debt.

The Private Equity Premium Puzzle Revisited

Staff Working Paper 2011-6 Katya Kartashova
In this paper, I extend the results of Moskowitz and Vissing-Jørgensen (2002) on the returns to entrepreneurial investments in the United States. First, following the authors’ methodology I replicate the original findings from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for the period 1989–1998 and show that the returns to private and public equity are similar.

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Bank publications

Bank of Canada Review articles

February 23, 2012

Household Borrowing and Spending in Canada

Understanding how much of the increased debt load of Canadian households has been used to finance household spending on consumption and home renovation is important for the conduct of monetary policy. In this article, the authors use a comprehensive data set that provides information on the uses of debt by Canadian households. They first present some facts regarding the evolution of Canadian household debt over the period from 1999 to 2010, emphasizing the increased importance of debt flows that are secured by housing. They then explore how Canadian households have used their borrowed funds over the same period, and assess the role of these borrowed funds in financing total consumption and spending on home renovation. Finally, they examine the possible effects of a decline in house prices on consumption when housing equity is used as collateral against household indebtedness.

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Journal publications

Refereed journals