0000000000679120
AUTHOR
Hanna Putkuri
Household Optimism and Borrowing
A unique Finnish household-level data from 1994 to 2009 allow us to measure how households’ financial expectations are related to the subsequent outcomes. We use the difference between the two to measure forecast errors and household optimism and link the errors to households’ borrowing behaviour. We find that households making greatest optimistic forecast errors carry greater levels of debt and are most likely to suffer from excessive debt loads (overindebtedness). They also are less attentive to forecast errors than their pessimistic counterparts when forming their expectations for a subsequent period.
Household optimism and overborrowing
We use Finnish household-level data from 1994 to 2013 to measure how often and what kind of forecast errors households make and how the errors are linked to the households' borrowing behavior and overindebtedness. We find that those households that make the largest optimistic forecast errors have greater debt-to-income ratios. They also are more likely to report that they suffer from excessive debt loads and have problems in coping with their bills. There are no such systematic effects for the households that make pessimistic forecast errors. peerReviewed