The main waves of a pandemic and subsequent disease outbreaks in the following years influence the evolution of the distributions of health and wealth, leading to differences in the ability to mitigate future income shocks. We study consumption smoothing and precautionary behaviour associated...

This paper develops an incomplete markets model with state dependent (Markovian) stochastic earnings processes and ex ante skill heterogeneity corresponding to being university educated or not. Using the Wealth and Assets Survey for Great Britain, we find that the university educated group has...

We develop a theoretical framework where the cross-sectional distributions of hours, earnings, wealth and consumption are determined jointly with a set of expenditure targets defining peer and aspirational pressure for members of different social classes. We show existence of a stationary...

Incomplete markets models imply heterogeneous household savings behaviour which in turn generates pecuniary externalities via the interest rate. Conditional on differences in the processes determining household earnings for distinct groups in the population, these savings externalities may...

Resource risk is a core ingredient of models of wealth inequality in modern economies, but remains understudied in explanations of inequality in early human and small-scale societies that can inform us about the origins of inequality. Resource risk generates variation in resources and leads to...

How do households adjust their spending behavior in response to changes in home price expectations? We conduct a field experiment with a sample of Americans that links survey data on home price expectations to actual spending behaviour as measured in a rich home-scanner dataset. In the...

We survey retail investors at an online bank to study beliefs about the autocorrelation of aggregate stock returns, and how these beliefs shape investment decisions measured in administrative account data. Individuals' beliefs exhibit substantial heterogeneity and predict trading responses to...

We review methodological questions relevant for the design of information provision experiments. We first provide a literature review of major areas in which information provision experiments are applied. We then outline key measurement challenges and design recommendations that may be of help...

In early April 2020 we conducted a survey on a representative sample of more than 8,000 US households to study the effect of the coronavirus crisis on household income and retirement wealth, households’ expectations about the recovery, and the impact of the shock on individuals’ economic...

We review recent advances in the literature on news consumption. We first provide an overview of different empirical techniques to measure news consumption, including browser data, TV viewership data, and survey-based measures. We also discuss the pros and cons of these different techniques. We...