This paper documents that region-level consumption exhibits excess sensitivity to lagged income in Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and West Germany. However, region-specific idiosyncratic) consumption exhibits substantially less sensitivity to lagged region-specific income. Also, excess...

This paper shows that there are striking implications that stem from including durable goods in otherwise conventional sticky price models. The behavior of these models depends heavily on whether durable goods are present and whether these goods have sticky prices. If long-lived durables have...

We use CEX repeated cross-section data on consumption and income, to evaluate the nature of increased income inequality in the 1980s and 90s. We decompose unexpected changes in family income into transitory and permanent, and idiosyncratic and aggregate components, and estimate the contribution...

I explore the dynamics in overlapping generations models with pure exchange and lump-sum taxes, when the second period after tax endowment is negative, and contrast the characteristics of equilibria to those of models with positive after tax endowments. In particular, if the intertemporal...

The consumer has been on a tightrope since the bursting of the "new economy" bubble, as losses in equity markets have been partly offset by gains in real estate and fiscal support and mortgage refinancing have partly offset increased consumer cautiousness. The consumer will remain on a tightrope...