Welfare Implications of Credit Rationing for Financial Consumers: An Empirical Investigation on the Case of the Korean Residential Mortgage Sector

Credit rationing through borrowing constraints has long been an important research topic in the literature, in the context of managing financial risks (i.e., financial stability) as well as of expanding financial service to more marginal borrower segments (i.e., financial inclusion). This study empirically investigates the role of borrowing constraints in the residential mortgage lending sector in Korea, by utilizing a discrete tenure choice model to test the constraining effects of two particular lending restrictions on households’ home owning decisions - the wealth and income constraints as measured by the maximum loan-to-value (LTV) ratio and that of debt-to-income (DTI) ratio. Using the household-level micro data from Korea, we report that: the lending restrictions exhibit negative effects on the propensity to own; those constraining effects are also shown to increase for younger borrower cohorts; and, the magnitude of the effect of wealth constraint is larger than that of the income constraint, which is consistent with the findings from the prior studies. Using the empirical findings, we discuss policy implications of relevancy, in particular, as to how to balance between two often competing policy objectives - ensuring financial stability and extending financial inclusion - in the context of the residential mortgage lending sector in Korea.2