This Letter examines movements in the interest rates charged on variable rate mortgages. The results indicate that variable rates for all lenders closely followed changes in the ECB's policy rate, short-term wholesale rates and tracker rate mortgages until the end of 2008. Thereafter, the...

This paper studies and documents household participation in voluntary individual retirement accounts (IRAs) in eleven European countries. Using recently available, internationally comparable data of households aged 50+, we calculate country-by-country average marginal effects of the probability...

We employ a life-cycle model with income risk to analyze how tax-deferred individual accounts affect households' savings for retirement. We consider voluntary accounts as opposed to mandatory accounts with minimum contribution rates. We contrast add-on accounts with carve-out accounts that...

This Economic Letter analyses original interest-only mortgages in Ireland. While interest-only arrangements have been widely used as a means of temporary forbearance to deal with the current mortgage arrears crisis, mortgages were also originated on interest-only terms during the height of the...

The recent nancial crisis highlighted the importance of stable funding and, in particular, customer deposits for the Irish banking sector. To ensure future viability, the domestic banks must maintain and grow their household deposit books. This letter focuses on the Irish household deposit...

At the end of 2012, almost one-fifth of owner-occupier mortgages were in arrears. A further five per cent not in arrears were classied as "restructured" loans. This Economic Letter looks at the impact of financial distress on household expenditure patterns by comparing the behaviour of...

This Economic Letter examines the link between house price dynamics in Ireland during the recent housing boom and the composition of buyers in the market. The analysis provides information on the relative riskiness of different buyer types, a topic that has increased in importance with the...

This note presents estimates of the likely credit requirements of different sectors of the economy over a short-term horizon to 2013. The measure of credit “demand” used in the analysis is the stock of outstanding loans to the Irish private sector from the resident banking sector. The...

At the peak of the Irish property boom in the mid-2000s, housing equity withdrawal by existing homeowners accounted for around one-third of residential mortgage loans issued. This collateral-based lending was typically issued at a signicant discount to other forms of personal lending, often at...

Changes in household consumption, which accounts for more than half of gross domestic demand expenditure, can have a significant impact on output and employment growth. This Economic Letter looks at the main drivers of household consumption, paying particular attention to the impact of the...