Pamplona September 24th, 2012.

Ernesto Villanueva (Ph.D. Northwestern University of Chicago) works as a researcher for the Banco de España. During the NCID Seminar, Villanueva presented an in-depth analysis about one of his latest research papers, “Consumption and initial mortgage conditions”. His presentation focused on initial mortgage conditions and their effects on the consumption behaviour of home-owners in Spain. By using a data set based on the Spanish Survey on Household Finances, Villanueva examined the relationship between household consumption and factors, such as initial loan maturity and interest rates. Villanueva concluded that the consumers’ response to these factors is variable depending primarily on their income and education.

Ernesto Villanueva is an Economist at the Research Division of the Banco de España since 2005. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
He obtained his Ph.D. in 2000 at Northwestern University for the dissertation "The Extent and Consequences of Parental Altruism". He is interested in analyzing intergenerational links using micro data, on studying the determinants of household consumption and borrowing and on measuring compensating wage differentials in the labor market.
He has published some papers that have appeared in the Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Public Economics, Advances in Economic Analysis and Policy, Economic Policy, Industrial and Labor Relations Review.