Determinants of credit to households: An approach using the life-cycle model

This paper applies a life-cycle model with individual income uncertainty in order to investigate the determinants of credit to households. We show that the household credit to GDP ratio depends on the lending-deposit interest rate spread, individual income uncertainty, and individual income persistence. We subsequently provide empirical evidence for the prediction of a theoretical model on the basis of data from OECD and EU countries. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.