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Mortgage Markets, Incomes Policies and Household Indebtedness in Europe

Comparative Politics
Institutions
Political Economy
Gregory Fuller
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Gregory Fuller
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Aidan Regan
University College Dublin

Abstract

Mortgage debt drove significant expansions in securitization, which unleashed devastating consequences for the international financial system in 2007-2008. Yet, despite the growing importance of household (mortgage) debt accumulation, IPE and CPE have said little about why household indebtedness is so different across countries. Before the 1980s, households’ access to credit was curtailed through national and international borrowing restrictions, which limited the amount of debt they could accumulate and consequently the volume of mortgage loans that banks could securitize. While international constraints on lending have receded, there still remain notable differences in national restrictions on household borrowing, particularly across Europe. Exploiting the institutional heterogeneity that European countries have to offer, this paper empirically examines whether and how diversity in national policies governing household credit access, and their interaction with national (wage-setting) institutions that shape income growth, has driven cross-national variation in household debt accumulation since the 1990s.