Under-refinancing limits the transmission of accommodative monetary policy to the household sector and costs mortgage holders in many countries a significant fraction of income annually. We test whether targeted communication can reduce the attention frictions that inhibit transmission by...

The primary purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the papers within the economics literature that have examined the questions of immigrant welfare use and the responsiveness of immigrants to the incentives created by welfare systems. While our focus is largely on papers looking at the...

Despite various efforts to address the mortgage arrears crisis, arrears remain at an elevated level. Designing policies to deal with such high levels of distress requires a deep understanding of the precise sources of the problem. Efforts to date, however, have been hampered by a lack of...

This paper analyses the role of interest rate expectations in determining a household’s selection of mortgage product. We use a bespoke survey of 1,484 mortgage holders conducted by the Central Bank of Ireland to investigate the choice between safe fixed rate and risky adjustable rate...

The interrelationship between house prices and mortgage credit has been one of the more compelling issues to warrant attention after the recent financial crisis. Considerable financial innovation and liberalisation of wholesale international funding markets over the past 20 years greatly...