Optimal Macroprudential Policies and House Prices in Korea

This article investigates the impacts of the macroprudential policy of limitation on credit growth in housing market on Korean economy to find empirical and theoretical implications. Empirical results based on VAR models show that macroprudential policies like LTV and DTI in Korea have significant and persistent effect on real household credit and real house price. This article further addresses implications of optimal macroprudential and monetary policy in Korea by employing a standard DSGE model. The results suggest that the time-varying macroprudential policy responding to the borrower’s debt to income ratio is most effective in stabilizing household debt among the macroprudential policy rules considered, but produces a moderate downturn of the economy.