We have investigated the influence of fiscal instruments, notably taxes on income and government spending, on household … consumption in two different samples and two measures of household debt to provide a comprehensive analysis of the topic. We used … government spending or reduced taxes, in the presence of high indebtedness, actually discourage household consumption compared to …

By means of a laboratory experiment, we show that, contrary to standard consumer theory, financially equivalent balance …

to consume (MPCs). Our main contribution is to document how MPCs vary with household characteristics and prize size, and … systematic relations with observables point toward well-understood mechanisms from existing theory and should be useful to …

We examine the ability of policymakers to stimulate household borrowing and spending during the Great Recession by …

portfolios, observed in the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) for these countries. We then show that the … heterogeneity in household finances implies that responses of consumption to changes in the real interest rate and in house prices …

across states shows that the rise in top income shares can explain almost all of the accumulation of household debt held as a … financial asset by the household sector. Since the Great Recession, the saving glut of the rich has been financing government …