Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we provide evidence that to understand household decisions and evaluate policies designed to affect individual welfare, it is important to add an intertemporal dimension to the by-now standard static collective models of the household. Specifically, we...

We propose a collective labor supply model with household production that generalizes a model of Blundell, Chiappori, and Meghir (2005). Adults' preferences depend not only on own leisure and individual private consumption of market goods. They also depend on the consumption of domestic goods,...

This paper provides empirical evidence about the effect of unearned income on earnings, consumption, and savings. Using an original survey of people playing the lottery in Massachusetts in the mid-1980s, we analyze the effects of the magnitude of lottery prizes on economic behavior. The critical...

Using time use survey data we document a hump-shaped profile of job search time in the United States across the life-cycle. The middle-aged unemployed spend roughly three times as much time in job search as the youngest group of unemployed. The hump-shaped profile of job search time is...

Empirical research on the permanent-income hypothesis (PIH) has found that consumption growth is excessively sensitive to predictable changes in income. This finding is interpreted as strong evidence against the PIH. We propose an explanation for apparent excess sensitivity that is based on a...