Timothy Besley (Bank of England, LSE and CEPR, Neil Meads (Bank of England) and Paolo Surico (Bank of England)
Sylvester Eijffinger (left) and Claudio Borio (right) awarding the CEPR/ESI 2008 Prize for the Best Central Bank Research Paper to Neil Meads of the Bank of England (middle).
(Photograph by Klaus Brodhage)
This paper was presented at the CEPR/ESI 12th Annual Conference on 'The Evolving Financial System and the Transmission Mechanism of Monetary Policy', at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, 25-26 September 2008. The paper was selected to win the 7th Annual Prize for the Best Central Bank Research Paper. The selection committee consisted of Claudio Borio (Bank for International Settlements), Sylvester Eijffinger (CentER and EBC Tilburg University, Erasmus University Rotterdam and CEPR), Kees Koedijk (Tilburg University and CEPR) and Christian Upper (Bank for International Settlements).
Abstract of the paper: This paper uses mortgage data to construct a measure of terms on
which households access to external finance, and relates it to consumption at both the aggregate and cohort levels. The Household External Finance (HEF) index is based on the spread paid by risky borrowers in the mortgage market. There is evidence that the terms of access to external finance matter more for the consumption of young cohorts in U.K. data. Results are robust to a wide variety of specifications.