The consumption behaviour of UK, US and Japanese households is examined and compared using a modern Ando-Modigliani style consumption function. The models incorporate income growth expectations, income uncertainty, housing collateral and other credit effects. These models therefore capture...

Does the transmission of economic policies and structural shocks vary with the state of the economy? We answer this question using a strategy based on quantile regressions, which account for both endogeneous regressors and state-dependent parameters. An application to U.S. real activity and...

There is widespread disagreement about the role of housing wealth in explaining consumption. This paper exploits liquid and illiquid wealth time series from household balance sheet data for South Africa, previously constructed by the authors, to explain fluctuations in the ratios of consumption...

This paper develops a new analysis of the U. S. economy in the 1920s that is illuminated by contrasts with the 1990s, and it also re examines the causes of the Great Depression. In both the 1920s and the 1990s the acceleration of productivity growth linked to the delayed effects of previously...

We assess the cost of different types of terrorist attacks on the growth of output and of its components. Private Consumption and Investment are significantly and negatively affected by all terror indicators, and the largest impact is respectively associated with the number of victims or the...

This paper provides an introduction to the special issue of the Review of Economic Dynamics on "Cross Sectional Facts for Macroeconomists''. The issue documents, for nine countries, the level and the evolution, over time and over the life cycle, of several dimensions of economic inequality,...

This Paper introduces a tractable, structural model of subjective beliefs. Forward-looking agents care about expected future utility flows, and hence have higher current felicity if they believe that better outcomes are more likely. On the other hand, biased expectations lead to poorer decisions...

Rapid trade liberalization is often followed by a decline in private savings, although permanent changes in trade policy do not affect intertemporal prices and should thus leave private savings unaffected. But a positive probability of future policy reversal lowers the consumption rate of...

In the absence of a major disruption in spending by consumers and firms, the effects of energy price shocks on the economy will be small. In this paper, we quantify the direct effect on real consumption of (1) unanticipated changes in discretionary income, (2) shifts in precautionary savings,...

This Paper analyses the effect of terror on the economy. Terror endangers life such that the value of the future relative to the present is reduced. Hence, due to a rise in terror activity, investment goes down, and in the long run income and consumption go down as well. Governments can offset...