Household debt and housing bubbles: a Minskian approach to boom-bust cycles

Abstract

This paper examines macroeconomic dynamics of household debt and housing prices in a two-class economy. Drawing on Minsky’s insights into financial instability and cycles, our framework combines household debt dynamics with behavioral asset price dynamics in a Keynesian macro model. We show that endogenous boom-bust cycles can emerge through the interaction between household debt and housing price dynamics. In this model, a long period of housing bubbles is characterized by increases in the profit share and the workers’ indebtedness for most of the time. The long waves are combined with a Kaldorian model of short-run business cycles.