One of the important determinants of the response of saving and consumption to the real interest rate is the elasticity … of intertemporal substitution. That elasticity can be measured by the response of the rate of change of consumption to …

Standard consumption models assume a notional consumption flow that does not distinguish between nondurable and durable … consumption. Such notional-consumption models generate notional marginal propensities to consume (MPC). By contrast, empirical … durable stock. We compare the notional-consumption model to an isomorphic model with a durable stock, and map notional MPCs …

distribution of household consumption. The analysis integrates the labor economics literature on time variation in the wage … structure with the consumption insurance literature. In contrast to previous tests of consumption insurance, we examine the … longitudinal data with high quality information on both consumption and labor market outcomes, we draw upon the best available …

The effects on consumption and retirement of characteristics of the life cycle, especially the length of the horizon …-cycle effects on consumption and retirement are estimated jointly for 1973 and 1975. There is a weak small effect of a more distant … reducing consumption; goods and leisure are consumed jointly, suggesting their complementarity in household production; and …

The consumption beta theorem of Breeden makes the expected return on any asset a function only of its covariance with … changes in aggregate consumption. It is shown that the theorem is more robust than was indicated by Breeden. The theorem …

the dynamics of a country's growth, consumption, and sovereign debt, assuming that the government is myopic and wants to … higher steady-state household consumption than if it could not borrow. However, in a developing country that saves little … governments repress as well. This leads to a "growth trap" where household steady-state consumption is lower than if the …

different income and consumption measures of poverty, and consider explanations for the differences in trends. We document sharp … differences, particularly in recent years, between different income poverty measures, and between income and consumption poverty … and transfers has a substantial effect on poverty rate changes over the past two decades. Furthermore, consumption poverty …

. In earlier work (Meyer and Sullivan, 2003) we emphasized that conceptual arguments generally favor using consumption data … to measure the well-being of the poor, and, on balance, data quality issues favor consumption in the case of single … mothers. Our earlier work did not show that income and consumption differ in practice. Here we further examine data quality …