INTERACTION BETWEEN CREDIT LENDING AND HOUSE PRICES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: AN ASSESSMENT OF SOVEREIGN DEBT CRISIS COUNTRIES

The existing literature indicates developments in either the housing markets or the credit markets can influence the whole financial sector or even the economy due to the close relationship between both markets. With an increasing dependency on the domestic financial markets to international financial markets caused by an increasing financial liberalisation degree, this relationship has strengthened significantly in many countries. This study aims at examining the interaction between credit lending and house prices for the Eurozone and the sovereign debt crisis countries of the EU (the GIIPS) at the cross-country and country levels, respectively. To do this, the vector autoregressibe (VAR) approach is followed. The findings show credit lending, not house prices are decisive in the interaction between credit and house prices for all samples.