An empirical study on Malaysian consumer debt: From the macroeconomic perspective / Suzila Muhammad

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between macroeconomic variables which are income, interest rate, living cost and population growth towards consumer debt in Malaysia. Malaysia is one of the highest household debts in the region when Malaysian economy has witnessed sharp increase in household debt since the past decade which household debt to GDP ratios have almost doubled between 2008 and 2015. Therefore, this study is conducted to deeply explain the macroeconomic variables toward consumer debt in Malaysia for the year 2006-2016 (quarterly) using Econometric Views (E-views) such as multiple linear regressions (MLR), unit root test, descriptive statistic, diagnostic test and many more. The result indicates that Income has insignificant relationship with consumer debt while interest rate, living cost and population growth have negative relationship with consumer debt in Malaysia. The result of this study would be able to facilitate the regulator, in particular Central Bank of Malaysia to take necessary action in order to combat the increased debt in the household sector.