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Consumer Spending and the Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008
Parker, Jonathan A.; Souleles, Nicholas S.; Johnson, … - In: American Economic Review 103 (2013) 6, pp. 2530-53
We measure the change in household spending caused by receipt of the economic stimulus payments of 2008, using questions added to the Consumer Expenditure Survey and variation from the randomized timing of disbursement. Households spent 12-30 percent (depending on specification) of their...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010815517
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Diagnosing Consumer Confusion and Sub-optimal Shopping Effort: Theory and Mortgage-Market Evidence
Woodward, Susan E.; Hall, Robert E. - In: American Economic Review 102 (2012) 7, pp. 3249-76
Mortgage loans are leading examples of transactions where experts on one side of the market take advantage of consumers' lack of knowledge and experience. We study the compensation that borrowers pay to mortgage brokers for assistance from application to closing. Two findings support the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010815545
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The Spending and Debt Response to Minimum Wage Hikes
Aaronson, Daniel; Agarwal, Sumit; French, Eric - In: American Economic Review 102 (2012) 7, pp. 3111-39
Immediately following a minimum wage hike, household income rises on average by about $250 per quarter and spending by roughly $700 per quarter for households with minimum wage workers. Most of the spending response is caused by a small number of households who purchase vehicles. Furthermore, we...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010815749
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Immigration and Inequality
Card, David - In: American Economic Review 99 (2009) 2, pp. 1-21
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10004999865
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Who Is (More) Rational?
Choi, Syngjoo; Kariv, Shachar; Wieland M?ller; … - In: American Economic Review 104 (2014) 6, pp. 1518-50
related to wealth: a standard deviation increase in consistency is associated with 15-19 percent more household wealth. This …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010777186
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Life Insurance and Household Consumption
Hong, Jay H.; Ríos-Rull, José-Víctor - In: American Economic Review 102 (2012) 7, pp. 3701-30
Using life insurance holdings by age, sex, and marital status, we infer how individuals value consumption in different demographic stages. We estimate equivalence scales and bequest motives simultaneously within a fully specified model where agents face US demographics and save and purchase life...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011129967
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Consumption and Debt Response to Unanticipated Income Shocks: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Singapore
Agarwal, Sumit; Qian, Wenlan - In: American Economic Review 104 (2014) 12, pp. 4205-30
This paper uses a unique panel dataset of consumer financial transactions to study how consumers respond to an exogenous unanticipated income shock. Consumption rose significantly after the fiscal policy announcement: during the ten subsequent months, for each $1 received, consumers on average...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011093398
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Retirement Security in an Aging Population
Poterba, James M. - In: American Economic Review 104 (2014) 5, pp. 1-30
Elderly individuals exhibit wide disparities in their sources of income. For those in the bottom half of the income distribution, Social Security is the most important source of support; program changes would directly affect their well-being. Income from private pensions, assets, and earnings...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010815685
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Disparities in Wealth Accumulation and Loss from the Great Recession and Beyond
McKernan, Signe-Mary; Ratcliffe, Caroline; Steuerle, Eugene - In: American Economic Review 104 (2014) 5, pp. 240-44
Great Recession on US family wealth relative to the counterfactual of what wealth would have been given wealth accumulation … trajectories. Our synthetic cohort-level models find that the Great Recession reduced average family wealth by 28.5 percent … the 1980s. The housing market was only part of the story; all major wealth components fell as a result of the Great …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010773992
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Inequality, Leverage, and Crises
Kumhof, Michael; Rancière, Romain; Winant, Pablo - In: American Economic Review 105 (2015) 3, pp. 1217-45
The paper studies how high household leverage and crises can be caused by changes in the income distribution. Empirically, the periods 1920-1929 and 1983-2008 both exhibited a large increase in the income share of high-income households, a large increase in debt leverage of low- and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011188462