Conference on “Household Finance and Consumption”
This paper was presented at the conference on “Household Finance and Consumption”, which was co-organised by the
Banque centrale du Luxembourg and the ECB, and was held on 25-26 October 2010 in Luxembourg. The organising committee
consisted of Michael Ehrmann (ECB), Michalis Haliassos (CFS and Goethe University), Thomas Matha (Banque centrale du
Luxembourg), Peter Tufano (Harvard Business School), and Caroline Willeke (ECB). The conference programme, including
papers, can be found at http://www.ecb.europa.eu/events/conferences/html/joint_ecb_lux.en.html. The views expressed in
this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Banque centrale du Luxembourg, the ECB or
the Eurosystem. Financial support from the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg (FNR) is gratefully acknowledged.