This paper exploits a quarterly panel data set for 16 OECD countries over the period 1975q1–2013q2 to explore the importance of house prices and credit in affecting the likelihood of a financial crisis. Estimating a set of multivariate logit models, we find that booms in credit to both...

The 'saving for a rainy day' hypothesis implies that households' saving decisions reflect that they can (rationally) predict future income declines. The empirical relevance of this hypothesis plays a key role in discussions of fiscal policy multipliers and it holds under the null that the...