We follow Fuhrer (2000) in estimating via Maximum Likelihood a log-linear consumption function on UK data. In doing so we consider various habit formation assumptions. We show that a model of purely external habits as in Fuhrer (2000) fits the UK data remarkably well, and possibly in a superior...

We study the distributional consequences of housing price, bond price and equity price increases for Euro Area households using data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). The capital gains from bond price and equity price increases turn out to be concentrated among relatively...

We estimate the "unhedged interest rate exposure" (URE) of euro area households. The URE is a welfare metric that captures the extent to which households are exposed to changes in real interest rates, and reflects the direct gains and losses in interest income flows incurred by households after...

House-purchasing decisions and the possibility of existing homeowners to tap into their housing equity depend decisively on prevailing loan-to-value (LTV) ratios in mortgage markets with borrowing constrained households. Utilizing a smooth transition local projection (STLP) approach, I show that...

We study the impact of market incompleteness and bounded rationality on the effectiveness of make-up strategies. To do so, we simulate a heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian (HANK) model with reflective expectations and an occasionally-binding effective lower bound (ELB) on the policy rate. Our...

Heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian models with sticky nominal wages usually assume that wage-setting unions demand the same amount of hours from all households. As a result, unions do not take account of the fact that (i) households are heterogeneous in their willingness to work, and that (ii)...

This paper examines the implications of habit formation in private and public consumption for the Pareto-efficient provision of public goods, based on a two-period model with nonlinear taxation. If the public good supply is time-invariant, the presence of habit formation generally alters the...

In a field experiment with 341 participants, we study whether social comparisons, either in isolation or in combination with a climate-related moral appeal, can change the use of public and car-related transportation. We do so in the context of a mobility budget offered to employees of a large...