Ragnar Enger Juelsrud

Management science p. 1-24 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.00987

In this paper, we use a novel natural experiment and Norwegian tax data to quantify the causal impact of unemployment risk on individual savings. By comparing individuals who live in the same area but face different increases in risk, we show that a one-percentage-point increase in unemployment rates increases safe assets by 1.3%. Reas- suringly, this effect is driven by low-tenured workers, who face the highest increase in risk. Savings in risky financial assets remain unaffected, implying a decrease in the overall risky share of individual portfolios. We use two independent approaches, relying either on cross-sectional variation or time series variation, to quantify the importance of job loss risk in accounting for higher savings during recessions. Our results suggest that unemploy- ment risk can explain 60%–80% of the recession-induced increase in safe assets

Samfunnsøkonomen 138(2)

I denne artikkelen forsøker vi å svare på om utlånsforskriften har virket etter hensikten og hvilke kostnader den påfører husholdningene. Forskningslitteraturen indikerer at boliglånsregulering bidrar til noe lavere gjelds- og boligprisvekst, men at det er mer usikkert om den reduserer husholdningenes sårbarhet for uforutsette hendelser som renteøkninger og arbeidsledighet. Utlånsforskriften påfører samtidig mange husholdninger kostnader ved at den begrenser muligheten for konsumglatting og kan gjøre det vanskeligere for unge å kjøpe sin første bolig. Reguleringen kan også forsterke viktigheten av formuende foreldre for muligheten til boligkjøp. Høy inflasjon og rente kan redusere behovet for forskriften og øke kostnadene.

Economics Letters 225 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111041

We investigate the impact of macro-related uncertainty on bank lending in Norway. We show that an increase in general macroeconomic uncertainty reduces bank lending. Importantly, however, we show that this effect is largely driven by monetary policy uncertainty, suggesting that uncertainty about the monetary policy stance is key for understanding why macro-related uncertainty impacts bank lending.

Review of Economic Studies 91(4) p. 2201-2275 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdad085

We investigate the bank lending channel of negative nominal policy rates from an empirical and theoretical perspective. For the empirical results we rely on Swedish data, including daily banklevel lending rates. We find that retail household deposit rates are subject to a lower bound (DLB). Empirically, once the DLB is met, the pass-through to mortgage lending rates and credit volumes is substantially lower and bank equity values decline in response to further policy rate cuts. We construct a banking sector model and use our estimate of the pass-through of negative policy rates to lending rates as an identified moment to parameterize the model and assess the impact of negative policy rates in general equilibrium. Using the theoretical framework, we derive a sufficient statistic for when negative policy rates are expansionary and when they are not.

Working Paper, Norges Bank