国际清算银行-消费者在家庭调查中报告债务的准确度如何？（英）

BIS Working Papers No 1258 How accurately do consumers report their debts in household surveys? by Carlos Madeira Monetary and Economic Department April 2025 JEL classification: C81, D10, D12, E21, G21 Keywords: household finance surveys, mortgages, consumer credit, default, measurement error BIS Working Papers are written by members of the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank for International Settlements, and from time to time by other economists, and are published by the Bank. The papers are on subjects of topical interest and are technical in character. The views expressed in them are those of their authors and not necessarily the views of the BIS. This publication is available on the BIS website (www.bis.org). © Bank for International Settlements 2025. All rights reserved. Brief excerpts may be reproduced or translated provided the source is stated. ISSN 1020-0959 (print) ISSN 1682-7678 (online) How accurately do consumers report their debts in householdsurveys?Carlos Madeira∗March 2025AbstractThis article advances upon previous studies by using a unique match of a representativesample of individual borrowers from the Chilean Household Finance Survey and their bankingloan records. I show that surveys differ from the credit registry, not just in the number of loansreported, but also in their amount, with a substantial degree of heterogeneity. Delinquencystatus is accurately reported by survey respondents.Furthermore, a substantial fraction ofthe discrepancies can be explained by rounding error in survey answers. Finally, I find thatdiscrepancies are larger when respondents are not the highest-income member of the family.JEL Classification: C81; D10; D12; E21; G21.Keywords: Household Finance Surveys; mortgages; consumer credit; default; measurementerror.∗Bank for International Settlements and Central Bank of Chile, carlos.madeira@bis.org. I would like to thankJon Frost, Basit Zafar, Sumit Agarwal, Jorge Ponce and seminar participants at the Central Bank of Chile and theChilean Financial Market Commission (CMF). The views expressed in the article are those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the views of the BIS or the Central Bank of Chile or its board members. All errors are my own.11IntroductionHousehold finance surveys, such as the Household Finance Consumption Survey in Europe orthe Survey of Consumer Finance in the US, are increasingly used to study families’ decisions onsavings, investments and borrowing (Dynan and Kohn 2007, Christelis, Georgarakos and Haliassos2013, Christelis, Ehrmann and Georgarakos 2017, Le Blanc et al. 2015, Bover et al. 2016). Surveyinformation on finances is important (Zinman 2009), especially because many households and smallenterprises rely on a diversity of funding sources and credit instruments, which may come frombank and non-bank lenders. Surveys also measure both formal and informal income sources, anadvantage in countries where informal employment can rep