Using the earnings from the first prize of the Spanish Christmas Lottery (one of the most popular lottery games in Spain), we study how local windfall gains from the Christmas Lottery can affect household consumption behavior. After estimating the direct impact of the lottery winnings on...

Firms that are more central invest more in equilibrium. Central firms are exposed to larger idiosyncratic shocks that propagate in the production network. Their incentive to engage in precautionary saving is larger, leading to larger investment. In the data, I find support for this prediction,...

Through certainty equivalent consumption (CE) measures, we show that dispersion of current earnings, expenditures, and net worth overstate welfare inequality. This is largely due to the unaccounted value of future earnings, which we call human wealth. The latter mitigates permanent‐income...

In this paper a new consumption function is derived based on savings motive hypothesis (SMH). The major theory behind the SMH is that households save part of their income in period 1 and transfer it to period 2. Implying that consumption in period 1 is the addition of autonomous consumption and...

We study the impact of income disaster-which can be triggered by various reasons such as pandemics and technological disruption-on Friedman's permanent income hypothesis. Although the hypothesis is still retained, our general equilibrium model offers two insights. First, with income disaster the...

Canonical life-cycle models predict that rational, fully forward-looking agents should perfectly smooth consumption over their lifetime. This prediction, while not supported by the data, has been mostly tested for developed countries like the U.S. We use recently available, rich longitudinal...