E2 - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment

• Housing Affordability and Parental Income Support

  Staff Working Paper 2024-28 Jason Allen, Kyra Carmichael, Robert Clark, Shaoteng Li, Nicolas Vincent

  In many countries, the cost of housing has greatly outpaced income growth, leading to a housing affordability crisis. Leveraging Canadian loan-level data and quasi-experimental variation in payment-to-income constraints, we document an increasing reliance of first-time homebuyers on financial help from their parents, through mortgage co-signing. We show that parental support can effectively relax borrowing constraints—potentially to riskier borrowers.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial services, Financial system regulation and policies, Housing JEL Code(s): D, D6, D64, E, E2, E21, E24, G, G1, G18, G5, G51

• Credit Card Minimum Payment Restrictions

  Staff Working Paper 2024-26 Jason Allen, Michael Boutros, Benedict Guttman-Kenney

  We study a government policy that restricts repayment choices with the aim of reducing credit card debt and estimate its effects by applying a difference-in-differences methodology to comprehensive credit-reporting data about Canadian consumers. We find the policy has trade-offs: reducing revolving debt comes at a cost of reducing credit access, and potentially increasing delinquency.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Credit and credit aggregates, Financial system regulation and policies JEL Code(s): D, D1, D18, E, E2, E21, G, G2, G28, G5, G51