摘要：Household debt levels have increased substantially over the last decade, both in terms of the total amount outstanding and relative to incomes. At the same time, household debt portfolios became more diversified. While such qualitative observations apply to many OECD countries, the betweencountry differences remain very stark and are empirically more important than changes over time within any country. This paper uses micro data from three OECD countries (the United States, Italy, and the Netherlands), to assess the determinants of household debt holding and to investigate whether or not credit constraints are important for household debt holding. We extend the existing literature in important ways. First, we present comparative evidence for three countries at the micro level, where we rely on household panel data for two countries; we are thus able to control for unobserved heterogeneity via individual household effects and to track changes in household behaviour over time.
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