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Abstract
We study heterogeneity in households’ credit across nine European countries (Belgium, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, and Slovakia) during 2022-2024 using granular credit register data. We first document substantial between- and within-country variation in mortgage and consumer lending by borrower age, loan maturity, and interest rate fixation. We then quantify the passthrough of the ECB’s recent tightening cycle to household borrowing costs, and assess its heterogeneous impact across households. Pass-through is nearly complete for mortgages (around 0.9) but considerably weaker for consumer credit (around 0.4). While mortgage pass-through is relatively homogeneous across countries, consumer credit shows pronounced cross-country differences that cannot be explained by borrower or loan characteristics. Younger households face stronger mortgage pass-through but weaker consumer credit pass-through relative to older borrowers, and longer maturities are associated with stronger pass-through in both credit markets.
Keywords: monetary policy transmission; household borrowing; credit registers; interest rate pass-through; cross-country heterogeneityJEL codes: E52, G21, D14
Household Borrowing and Monetary Policy Transmission: Post-Pandemic Insights from Nine European Credit Registers
Micro-assessment of macroprudential borrower-based measures in Lithuania
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Abstract
The high-paced growth of the Lithuanian mortgage market may cast doubt on either the efficacy of the country’s macroprudential toolkit, or the appropriateness of its current parametrisation in putting a backstop to excessive dynamics. This paper assesses the adequacy of BBM’s in Lithuania by building a novel lifetime expected credit loss framework that is founded on actual loan-level default and household income data. Based on the modelling framework we document seven findings which are relevant for policymakers. We show that the BBM package effectively contains mortgage credit risk and that housing loans are more resilient to stress than in the pre-regulatory era. Our BBM limit calibration exercise reveals that: i) in the low-interest rate environment income-based measures could have been tighter; ii) borrowers taking out secondary mortgages rightly are and should be required to pledge a higher down payment of at least 30%.
Keywords: macroprudential policy, borrower-based measures, LTV, mortgage credit risk, lifetime expected credit loss, probability of default.
JEL Codes: C25, E61, G18, G21, G51.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.