Financial Concerns and the Marginal Propensity to Consume in COVID Times: Evidence from UK Survey Data PDF Download

Author: Dzung Bui
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In evaluating surveys conducted in Thailand and Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that the marginal propensity to consume is significantly larger for positive than for negative income shocks. This result contradicts a prediction from the lifecycle permanent income model with borrowing constraints as well as empirical evidence from industrialized countries. However, our finding is consistent with Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory, according to which the combination of income uncertainty and loss aversion can induce households to react more strongly to positive than to negative shocks.

Author: Bruno Albuquerque
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
We study how household concerns about their future financial situation may affect the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a representative survey of UK households to compute the MPC from a hypothetical transfer of £500. We find that household expectations play a key role in determining differences in MPCs across households: households concerned about not being able to make ends meet have a 20% higher MPC than other households. Our findings suggest that policies targeted to vulnerable and financially distressed households may prove more effective in stimulating demand than providing stimulus payments to all households.

Author: Ezra Karger
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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We identify 16,016 recipients of Covid-19 Economic Impact Payments in anonymized transaction-level debit card data from Facteus. We use an event study framework to show that in the two weeks following a sudden $1,200 payment from the IRS, consumers immediately increased spending by an average of $577, implying a marginal propensity to consume (MPC) of 48%. Consumer spending falls back to normal levels after two weeks. Stimulus recipients who live paycheck-to-paycheck spend 68% of the stimulus payment immediately, while recipients who save much of their monthly income spend 23% of the stimulus payment immediately. Consumer age and location are only marginally correlated with individual MPCs after controlling for each individual's pre-pandemic propensity to save. We use the 2018 American Community Survey to re-weight our data to match the U.S. population. Ignoring equilibrium effects and assuming a constant MPC for each person, we estimate that the CARES Act's $296 billion of payments to individuals will increase consumer spending by $138 billion (47% of total outlays). A stimulus bill of the same size targeted at individuals with the highest MPCs would have instead increased consumer spending by $201 billion (68% of total outlays).

Author: Gina Tran
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This paper studies the impulse responses of output and private consumption to the COVID-19 stimulus packages in the U.S. I develop a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) to calculate the orthogonalized impulse response functions (OIRFs) of output and private consumption to a government consumption shock during the pandemic recession. The results are consistent with government consumption shock stylized facts: (1) output and private consumption increased on impact to the stimulus packages during the pandemic recession; (2) government consumption and private consumption were complementary during the pandemic. Furthermore, the on-impact and cumulative fiscal multiplier of the COVID-19 stimulus packages are 0.61 and 0.60 respectively. The on-impact impulse responses of output and private consumption to the stimulus packages were lower during the pandemic recession than those during past recessionary periods in the U.S. Such less significant responses were induced by a low marginal propensity to consume and a drop in the employment level during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. My results suggest that in addition to the fear of COVID-19 and lockdown policies, a drop in the employment level of low-income households caused the presence of a low marginal propensity to consume in the U.S. during the pandemic recession.

Author: Dimitrios Christelis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : COVID-19 (Disease)
Languages : en
Pages : 57

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Book Description
Using new panel data from a representative survey of households in the six largest euro area economies, the paper estimates the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on consumption. The panel provides, each month, household-specific indicators of the concern about finances due to Covid-19 from the first peak of the pandemic until October 2020. The results show that this concern causes a significant reduction in non-durable consumption. The paper also explores the potential impact on consumption of government interventions and of another wave of Covid-19, using household-level consumption adjustments to scenarios that involve positive and negative income shocks. Fears of the financial consequences of the pandemic induce a significant reduction in the marginal propensity to consume, an effect consistent with models of precautionary saving and liquidity constraints. The results are robust to endogeneity concerns through use of panel fixed effects and partial identification methods, which account also for time-varying unobservable variables, and provide informative identification regions of the average treatment effect of the concern for Covid-19 under weak assumptions.

Author: Pinghui Wu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Leveraging novel data on consumer credit and debit card spending by Zip code, this study examines how the impact of government transfers on economic well-being varied by household type during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that pandemic transfers disproportionately benefited households with children, buffering them from earnings losses at the pandemic's start and sustaining spending growth over time. Household essential spending increased proportionally with the delivery of cash transfers, while discretionary spending was influenced more by pandemic-specific factors beyond household income. Our results also offer preliminary evidence that households with children had a higher marginal propensity to consume during the early stages of the pandemic. These findings highlight the efficacy of government transfers in safeguarding household consumption during a period of large-scale job loss.

Author: Bruce D. Meyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
We examine the distribution of household consumption, income and savings from 2019 through the end of 2020 using the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) and other data. This is the first work to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic well-being using nationally representative consumption data. We find that low percentiles of the consumption distribution see pre-pandemic growth and little change with the onset of the pandemic. On the other hand, higher percentiles of the consumption distribution do not increase before the pandemic and fall in 2020. Leveraging the rich demographics of our microdata, we find the most pronounced decline for high-educated families near the top of the consumption distribution and seniors in the top half of the distribution. The decrease in the top half is less evident for non-Whites. These patterns for consumption are different than those for income, particularly in the upper part of the distribution. Liquid assets increase in the upper half of the distribution, consistent with the divergence between the upper half of the income and consumption distributions. Our results suggest that the policy response to the pandemic averted a decrease in consumption for the most materially disadvantaged families, while changes in aggregate consumption accord with the observed patterns in the top of the consumption distribution. The changes for various types of consumption, and the distribution of those changes across the material resource distribution, are consistent with reductions in travel to work--which were large for those with greater material advantage--and restrictions on outlets for consumption.

Author: B. Winkler
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137352981
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Provides a comprehensive overview of a broad range of uses of the flow of funds within the central bank community as well as in the academic field, prepared by international experts in the field. Based on the crisis experience, it offers an overview of lessons for macrofinancial analysis and financial stability.

Author: Allen N. Berger
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 044315273X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
The Economic and Financial Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis Around the World: Expect the Unexpected provides an informed, research-based in-depth understanding of the COVID-19 crisis, its impacts on households, nonfinancial firms, banks, and financial market participants, and the effectiveness of the reactions of governments and policymakers in the United States and around the world. It provides reflections and perspectives on the social costs and benefits of various policies undertaken and a toolkit of preventive measures to deal with crises beyond the COVID-19 crisis. Authors Allen N. Berger, Mustafa U. Karakaplan, and Raluca A. Roman apply their expertise to the research and data on the COVID-19 economic crisis as well as draw on their own rich research experience. They take a holistic approach that compares and contrasts this crisis with other economic and financial crises and assesses economic and financial behavior and government policies in the booms before crises and the aftermaths following them, as well as the crises themselves. They do all this with a keen eye on "Expecting the Unexpected future crises, and policies that might anticipate them and provide better outcomes for society. - Serves as a compendium of available research and data on COVID-19, policies in response to the pandemic, and its effects on the real economy, banking sector, and financial markets - Contextualizes the COVID-19 economic crisis by comparing it to two other global crises from the past: the Crash of 1929 and the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 - Helps illustrate how crises that originate in financial markets and in the banking sector differ from each other as well as from the COVID-19 crisis that harmed the real economy first - Compares the policies and outcomes of nations to the COVID-19 pandemic and assesses their costs and benefits, with potential implications for prospective future crises

Author: Bruno Albuquerque
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
We use UK transaction-level data during the Covid-19 pandemic to study whether mortgage payment holidays (PH) can act as a mechanism for smoothing household consumption following negative aggregate shocks. Our results suggest that mortgage PH were accessed by both households with pre-existing financial vulnerabilities and by those with stronger balance sheets, including buy-to-let investors. We also find that the temporary liquidity relief provided by PH allowed liquidity-constrained households to maintain higher annual consumption growth compared to those non-eligible for the policy. Finally, we find that mortgage PH led to higher saving rates for more financially-stable households.