José María Casado

The Distribution of Debt Across Euro Area Countries: The Role of Individual Characteristics, Institutions and Credit Conditions

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we present an up-to-date assessment of the differences across euro area countries in the distributions of various measures of debt conditional on household characteristics. We consider three different outcomes: the probability of holding debt, the amount of debt held and, in the case of secured debt, the interest rate paid on the main mortgage. Second, we examine the role of legal and economic institutions in accounting for these differences. We use data from the first wave of a new survey of household finances, the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, to achieve these aims. We find that the patterns of secured and unsecured debt outcomes vary markedly across countries. Among all the institutions considered, the length of asset repossession periods best accounts for the features of the distribution of secured debt. In countries with longer repossession periods, the fraction of people who borrow is smaller, the youngest group of households borrow lower amounts (conditional on borrowing), and the mortgage interest rates paid by low-income households are higher. Regulatory loan-to-value ratios, the taxation of mortgages and the prevalence of interest-only or fixed-rate mortgages deliver less robust results.

Worker Flows in the European Union During the Great Recession

We firstly measure the contribution of worker flows across employment, unemployment, and non-participation to the change in unemployment in eleven EU countries during the period 2006-2012, paying special attention to which socio-demographic groups in each of the countries were most affected by job creation and job destruction during the crisis. We find that age, to a greater extent than educational attainment, is the main determinant of flows from employment into unemployment, particularly in those countries where unemployment increased most. Secondly, we highlight some institutional features of the labour market (employment protection legislation, unemployment insurance and the incidence of active labour market policies) that help explain the cross-country differences in flows between employment and unemployment and in their socio-demographic composition. Finally, we examine whether the crisis has led to some employment reallocation across sectors, finding that, so far, there is no clear evidence in favour of cleansing effects.

Microsimulation tools for the evaluation of fiscal policy reforms at the Banco de España

This paper presents the microsimulation models developed at the Banco de España for the study of fiscal reforms, describing the tool used to evaluate changes in the Spanish personal income tax and also the one for the value added tax and excise duties. In both cases the structure, data and output of the model are detailed and its capabilities are illustrated using simple examples of hypothetical tax reforms, presented only to illustrate the use of these simulation tools.

Consumption Partial Insurance of Spanish Households

This paper measures how households smooth changes in consumption when incomes are shifted by permanent or transitory shocks at country and regional level. I compute insurance capacity using the Spanish Continuous Family Expenditure Survey skipping the imputation methods used by the previous literature to mitigate the significant lack of income and consumption panel data information. I find some partial insurance for permanent shocks and a downward bias when imputed data are used. There is significant sensitivity for the youngest and primary educated cohorts that becomes more relevant in some regions. I obtain that durable purchases are a source of insurance with respect to transitory shocks and the effect of family income transfers is almost negligible.