In Sweden variable-rate mortgages are relatively common. Furthermore, householdindebtedness is high in relation to other nations within the European Union. Therefore,monetary policy has a stronger effect on the economy due to the household sensitivityregarding interest rates. During times of changes in the policy rate, the expectation is that theimpact on consumption is greater, because of a stronger effect due to higher sensitivity of theinterest rates. Moreover, consumption expenditures make up a large part of the Swedisheconomy, with approximately half of the gross domestic product consisting of householdconsumption. Because of the mentioned reasons it is important and compelling to examinethe relationship between the structure of the mortgage market, monetary policy andhousehold consumption. Thus, we investigate how the mortgage term affects householdconsumption during times the policy rate is changed. To answer the question an empirical method is utilized. The data used is quantitativesecondary data gathered from different sources and coordinated. The data material spans aperiod of roughly 17 years which contains three periods when the Swedish central bankchanged the policy rate and the observations are on a monthly basis, from january 2006 untilseptember 2023. To perform the analysis the statistical software IBM SPSS is used. Theregression analysis is implemented through the “General linear model”. The dependentvariable is household consumption. The explanatory variables include the proportion ofvariable-rate mortgages, disposable income, the policy rate as well as inflation. The policyrate and inflation are also lagged backward in time by one year respectively. The result of the regression analysis implicates that the effects of all the explanatory variablesin the study are statistically significant. As regards the policy rate though, only the laggedversion of the variable is statistically significant. The share of variable-rate mortgages, whichis a measurement of the mortgage term, has a negative effect on household consumption. Theeffect of disposable income is positive. Furthermore, both the policy rate and its laggedversion have negative effects on household consumption. In contrast, inflation has a positiveeffect while the lagged version of inflation has a negative effect on household consumptionwhich is larger in magnitude.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-98785 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Wejdenmark, Martin, Rasooli, Alireza |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Handelshögskolan (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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