Author: Orazio P. AttanasioPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumer behaviour
Languages : en
Pages : 41
Book Description
Consumption Growth and Excess Sensitivity to Income
Author: Orazio P. AttanasioPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumer behaviour
Languages : en
Pages : 41
Book Description
Consumption Growth and Excess Sensitivity to Income: Evidence from U.S. Micro Data
Author: National Saving and Economic Performance
Author: B. Douglas BernheimPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226044040
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 408
Book Description
"... Papers presented at a conference held at the Stouffer Wailea Hotel, Maui, Hawaii, January 6-7, 1989. ... part of the Research on Taxation program of the National Bureau of Economic Research." -- p. ix.
Inattentive Consumers
Author: Ricardo ReisPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumer behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 72
Book Description
This paper studies the consumption decisions of agents who face costs of acquiring, absorbing and processing information. These consumers rationally choose to only sporadically update their information and re-compute their optimal consumption plans. In between updating dates, they remain inattentive. This behavior implies that news disperses slowly throughout the population, so events have a gradual and delayed effect on aggregate consumption. The model predicts that aggregate consumption adjusts slowly to shocks, and is able to explain the excess sensitivity and excess smoothness puzzles. In addition, individual consumption is sensitive to ordinary and unexpected past news, but it is not sensitive to extraordinary or predictable events. The model further predicts that some people rationally choose to not plan, live hand-to-mouth, and save less, while other people sporadically update their plans. The longer are these plans, the more they save. Evidence using U.S. aggregate and microeconomic data generally supports these predictions.
Consumption and Aggregate Constraints
Author: Charlotte OstergaardPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
State-level consumption exhibits excess sensitivity to lagged income to the same extent as U.S. aggregate data, but state-specific (idiosyncratic) consumption exhibits substantially less sensitivity to lagged state-specific income - a result that also holds for Canadian provinces. We propose the following interpretation: borrowing and lending in response to changes in consumer demand are easier for individual U.S. states than for the United States as a whole, and therefore, the measured deviation from the benchmark permanent income hypothesis model is smaller. However, lagged state-specific variables help predict state-specific consumption, suggesting that the PIH model still requires qualification.
Consumption Over the Life Cycle and Over the Business Cycle
Author: Orazio P. AttanasioPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumption (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 54
Book Description
The main aim of this paper is to assess the validity of the life cycle model of consumption. In particular, we address an issue that has recently received much attention, especially in the macroeconomic literature: that of "excess sensitivity" of consumption growth to income growth. We do this using a time series of cross sections and a novel and flexible parameterization of preferences. The former allows us to' address aggregation issues directly, while with the latter we can allow both the discount factor and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution eis to be affected by various observable variables and lifetime wealth. The main findings can be summarized as follows: (i) the excess sensitivity of consumption growth to labor income disappears when we control for demographic variables. This is true both at life cycle and business cycle frequencies. (ii) estimation of a flexible specification of preferences indicates that the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is a function of several variables, including the level of consumption. The eis increases with the level of consumption, as expected. (iii) the variables that change the eis are also important in explaining why we observe excess sensitivity over the business cycle. (iv) we are able to reconcile our results with those reported both in the macro and micro literature. (v) in our specification the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is not very well determined. This result, however, should be taken with care, as we have not made an effort to construct a 'preferred' specification, which would probably include additional controls for labor supply behavior. The evidence presented shows that the life cycle model cannot be easily dismissed. Indeed, we believe that the model does a good job at representing consumption behavior both over the life cycle and over the business cycle.
The consumption response to income changes
Author: Tullio JappelliPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Consumption (Economics)
Languages : en
Pages : 58
Book Description
We review different empirical approaches that researchers have taken to estimate how consumption responds to income changes. We critically evaluate the empirical evidence on the sensitivity of consumption to predicted income changes, distinguishing between the traditional excess sensitivity tests, and the effect of predicted income increases and income declines. We also review studies that attempt to estimate the marginal propensity to consume out of income shocks, distinguishing between three different approaches: identifying episodes in which income changes unexpectedly, relying on the covariance restrictions that the theory imposes on the joint behavior of consumption and income growth, and combining realizations and expectations of income or consumption in surveys where data on subjective expectations are available.
Understanding Consumption
Author: Angus DeatonPublisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191521639
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
This book provides an overview of the recent research on saving and consumption, a field in which substantial progress has been made over the last decade. Attempts by economists to understand saving and consumption patterns have generated some of the best science in economics. For more than fifty years, there has been serious empirical and theoretical activity, and data, theory, and policy have never been separated as has happened in many branches of economics. Research has drawn microeconomists interested in household behaviour, as well as macroeconomists, for whom the behaviour of aggregate consumption has always occupied a central role in explaining aggregate fluctuations. Econometricians have also made distinguished contributions, and there has been a steady flow of new methodologies by those working on saving and consumption, in time-series econometrics, as well as in the study of micro and panel data. A coherent account of these developments is presented here, emphasizing the interplay between micro and the macro, between studies of cross-section and panels, and those using aggregate time series data.
Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin
Author: Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures
Author: Christopher D. CarrollPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022612665X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 517
Book Description
Robust and reliable measures of consumer expenditures are essential for analyzing aggregate economic activity and for measuring differences in household circumstances. Many countries, including the United States, are embarking on ambitious projects to redesign surveys of consumer expenditures, with the goal of better capturing economic heterogeneity. This is an appropriate time to examine the way consumer expenditures are currently measured, and the challenges and opportunities that alternative approaches might present. Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures begins with a comprehensive review of current methodologies for collecting consumer expenditure data. Subsequent chapters highlight the range of different objectives that expenditure surveys may satisfy, compare the data available from consumer expenditure surveys with that available from other sources, and describe how the United States’s current survey practices compare with those in other nations.