摘要：This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of Irish mortgage arrears using a newloan-level dataset which incorporates data from four Irish banks. We identify the maincharacteristics of accounts in arrears and examine the role of ability-to-pay and equity factors inthe recent hike in mortgage delinquency rates. We find that borrowers who took out theirmortgage for buy-to-let purposes, those with high loan-to-value ratios and those with highrepayment burdens are all more likely to be in arrears. This is also the case for borrowers withproperties in regions that have suffered more severe economic shocks, as proxied for by changesin the regional unemployment rate. Our empirical analysis suggests that affordability issues andgeneral macroeconomic developments have had an important and sizeable effect on arrears trendsover time, suggesting that policy efforts to target the growing level of mortgage arrears need totake account of these issues
