Research Discussion Paper – RDP 2003-08 A Tale of Two Surveys: Household Debt and Financial Constraints in Australia

Contents

• Introduction
• Previous Research
• The Data
• Features of the Data
• Understanding Constraints Better: A Model
• Analysis and Implications
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Previous Studies on Liquidity Constraints
• Appendix B: Variable Definitions
• Appendix C: Imputation of Household Income in HILDA
• References

The authors thank Jeremy Lawson for assisting in the imputation of household income for some respondents in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. We also wish to thank the HILDA team at the Melbourne Institute, the Living Conditions Section of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and seminar participants at the Reserve Bank of Australia for helpful comments and discussion. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Reserve Bank of Australia.