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Author: Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Using new transaction data I show that consumption is excessively sensitive to large, predetermined, regular, and salient payments from the Alaska Permanent Fund, with a large average marginal propensity to consume (MPC) of 30% for nondurables and services and 70% for total expenditures. This deviation from the standard inter-temporal consumption model is concentrated among households for whom the loss from failing to smooth consumption is small in terms of equivalent variation. In particular, the MPC is increasing in household income but decreasing in the size of the loss. As a result, statistically significant excess sensitivity in response to these large payments is consistent with households following near-rational alternative consumption plans. For macroeconomic policies, such as an economic stimulus program, these near-rational alternatives might be the more relevant behavior than the standard consumption model.
Author: Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Using new transaction data I show that consumption is excessively sensitive to large, predetermined, regular, and salient payments from the Alaska Permanent Fund, with a large average marginal propensity to consume (MPC) of 30% for nondurables and services and 70% for total expenditures. This deviation from the standard inter-temporal consumption model is concentrated among households for whom the loss from failing to smooth consumption is small in terms of equivalent variation. In particular, the MPC is increasing in household income but decreasing in the size of the loss. As a result, statistically significant excess sensitivity in response to these large payments is consistent with households following near-rational alternative consumption plans. For macroeconomic policies, such as an economic stimulus program, these near-rational alternatives might be the more relevant behavior than the standard consumption model.
Author: Ricardo J. Caballero Publisher: ISBN: Category : Consumption (Economics) Languages : en Pages : 27
Book Description
The simple permanent income model provides a good description of the medium-long run behavior of aggregate nondurables consumption, while it fails in describing its short run behavior. In this paper I present a non-representative agent model with near-rational microeconomic units that simultaneously explains the observed excess smoothness of consumption to wealth innovations, the excess sensitivity of consumption to lagged income changes, as well as small conditional asymmetries found in the data. In spite of the presence of large non-diversifiable idiosyncratic uncertainty, the estimated dollar equivalent utility cost of the micreconomic near-rational strategy required to explain the aggregate facts is only 0.26y percent of consumption per year, where y is the coefficient of relative risk aversion
Author: Marjorie Flavin Publisher: ISBN: Category : Consumption (Economics) Languages : en Pages : 50
Book Description
Almost all of the recent empirical tests of the rational expectations - permanent income hypothesis (RE-PIH) have rejected the hypothesis. The null hypothesis in this empirical literature typically consists of the joint hypothesis that 1) agents' expectations are formed rationally, 2) desired consumption is determined by permanent income, and 3) capital markets are"perfect" in the sense that agents can lend or borrow against expected future income at the same interest rate. This paper attempts to determine whether the excess sensitivity of consumption to current income can be attributed to a failure of the third component of the joint hypothesis -- the assumption of "perfect" capital markets -- as opposed to a failure of one or both of the first two assumptions. The paper examines, as a specific alternative to the PIH, a simple "Keynesian" consumption function in which the behavioral MPC out of transitory income is different from zero. Interpreting the unemployment rate as a proxy for the proportion of the population subject to liquidity constraints, the paper uses a generalized version of the econometric model in my earlier paper(1981) to conduct a specification test of the "Keynesian" consumption function. The finding that the estimate of the MPC out of transitory income is dramatically affected, in both magnitude and statistical significance, by the inclusion of the proxy for liquidity constraints suggests that liquidity constraints are an important part of the explanation of the observed excess sensitivity of consumption to current income.
Author: Ricardo Reis Publisher: 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.
Book Description
Most empirical studies on liquidity constraints classify a consumer as being constrained on the basis of a single indicator such as the asset to income ratio. In this analysis, we model the probability that a consumer faces liquidity constraints as a function of multiple social and economic factors. This probability function is estimated simultaneously with the degree of excess sensitivity of consumption to income in a switching regressions framework. The switching regressions apply optimal weights to the densities for the Euler equations in the two states and are less susceptible to sample misclassification. Our results based on data from the CEX confirm that liquidity constrained consumers are excessively sensitive to variables already known to economic agents. However, there is also evidence that the unconsistent with the theoretical predictions. Further analysis suggests that such behavior could be explained by time-non-separable preferences.
Author: Marjorie Flavin Publisher: ISBN: Category : Consumption (Economics) Languages : en Pages : 53
Book Description
The paper investigates the implications of the omitted information problem -- that is, the econometric problem which arises because an econometrician cannot explicitly include the complete set of variables potentially used by agents -- in the context of the "excess smoothness" phenomenon posed by Deaton 11987]. The paper shows that an econometrician who fails to take into account the effects of omitted information will incorrectly conclude that an empirical finding of excess smoothness of consumption implies that the income process is nonstationary. By contrast, with a more thorough understanding of the omitted information problem, the finding of excess smoothness of consumption is easily explained with two assumptions: a) the consumption data is generated by the excess sensitivity alternative hypothesis, in which consumption is a weighted average of current income and permanent income, and b) agents are forecasting on the basis of a larger information set than the econometrician. Further, excess smoothness is revealed to be consistent with a wide range of stationary income processes as well as nonstationary income processes. Thus the common presumption that the excess smoothness phenomenon is linked in an essential way to the stationarity or nonstationarity of the income process evaporates when omitted information is taken into consideration
Author: John B. Taylor Publisher: Elsevier ISBN: 0444594787 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 1376
Book Description
Handbook of Macroeconomics surveys all major advances in macroeconomic scholarship since the publication of Volume 1 (1999), carefully distinguishing between empirical, theoretical, methodological, and policy issues. It courageously examines why existing models failed during the financial crisis, and also addresses well-deserved criticism head on. With contributions from the world's chief macroeconomists, its reevaluation of macroeconomic scholarship and speculation on its future constitute an investment worth making. - Serves a double role as a textbook for macroeconomics courses and as a gateway for students to the latest research - Acts as a one-of-a-kind resource as no major collections of macroeconomic essays have been published in the last decade
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Author: Ricardo J. Caballero
Author: Lorenz Kueng
Author: Marjorie Flavin
Author: Ricardo Reis
Author: Clifford L. F. Attfield
Author: René Garcia
Author: Marjorie Flavin
Author: John B. Taylor
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