Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-169). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The thesis deals with the issue of excessive debt of households. In the first part the analysis of development of indebtedness of households was made and it was found out, that consumer loans are the most risky. Consumer loans are associated with the highest ratio of defaulting loans and are the leading cause of bankruptcies of individuals in the Czech Republic. The following chapter analyzes institutional environment of credit market and detects current weaknesses. These weaknesses consist in insufficient oversight of nonbank provider of consumer loans, absence of upper limit of annual percentage rate for consumer credit and credit availability to risk groups of households. Another cause of overindebtedness of households is insufficient financial literacy in Czech Republic. The reduced consumption has been identified as the most significant impact of overindebtedness of households. It is caused by transferring funds from households with a higher propensity to consume to households with a lower propensity to consume. Lower household consumption leads also to lower government revenue collected through the value added tax. Another economic impact we can see for example in increasing poverty of households, increasing criminality, higher government spending on health care or potential political radicalization. The thesis results are proposals of legislative measures that would mitigate the economic impact of overindebtedness of households. These measures lie primarily in the regulation of consumer credit market and greater consumer protection. The specific options are an extension of supervision by the Czech National Bank on nonbank providers of consumer loans, determining the upper limit of annual percentage rate, more thorough application of the legal obligation to examine the ability of borrowers to repay loans. Another option is to reduce the limit of 30 % of paid-up commitments in insolvency law.

Cette thèse examine l'impact du développement du marché du crédit sur la croissance économique et essaye d'apporter un éclairage sur certains résultats empiriques controversés relevant de cette littérature. A cette fin, nous investiguons l'impact du développement du marché du crédit à la consommation et celui du marché du crédit à l'investissement sur la croissance. A l'aide d'une extension du modèle d'Aghion et al (2005), nous mettons en évidence que le développement du marché du crédit à la consommation au détriment de celui des crédits à l'investissement affecte défavorablement la croissance économique. Ces constatations sont validées empiriquement sur un échantillon de 27 pays européens.Sur le plan empirique, nous exploitons les techniques des séries temporelles et celles des données de panel afin de dégager les relations de court terme et de long terme entre le développement du marché du crédit et la croissance économique. L'application porte sur un échantillon de 20 pays hétérogènes couvrant la période 1960-2009. Les évidences empiriques valident une relation positive à long terme entre le développement du marché du crédit et la croissance économique alors que la relation de court terme diffère d'un pays à un autre.En utilisant un panel de pays MENA, nous démontrons que le développement du marché du crédit islamique et celui du marché du crédit conventionnel affectent négativement le développement économique de la région. Enfin, nous démontrons que la relation crédit-croissance dans les pays MENA est non linéaire et déterminée par le niveau de développement du secteur des technologies de l'information et de la communication. / This thesis examines the effect of credit market development on economic growth in order to provide explanations for the ambiguous results of empirical studies on this relationship. To this end, we assess the different effects of consumer credit market and entrepreneurial credit market on economic growth. Using an extension of the framework of Aghion et al (2005), we show that the development of the consumer credit market to the detriment of the development of entrepreneurial credit market affects negatively economic growth. We provide empirically validation of these findings on a sample of 27 European countries during the period 1995-2009.Moreover, using both time series techniques and panel data methods, we investigate empirically the short-term and long-term relationships for a sample of 20 heterogeneous countries over the period 1960-2009. Our results confirm a positive long-term relationship between credit market development and economic growth while the short-run relationship differs from one country to another.Furthermore, we inspect the effects of the development of islamic credit market and the development of conventional credit market on economic growth in MENA countries. Applying the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators developed for dynamic panel, we find that both islamic credit market and conventional credit market harmful for economic growth. Examining the non-linear effect of credit market development on economic growth, we show that that economies in Mena region can benefit from credit market development only once a threshold of ICT development is reached.