In Austria, the share of foreign currency mortgages in total household debt has been increasing since the late 1990s. Today about one-third of household credit debt is denominated in foreign currency, mostly in Swiss francs. A major issue with regard to the resulting implications for financial...

Over the past decades, household debt has increased sharply, both in absolute and relative terms, in almost all OECD countries. As the U.S. subprime crisis recently showed, even a relatively small number of indebted households can produce considerable turmoil if the sustainability of their debt...