In this paper we analyze a large sample of individual responses to six lottery questions. Wederive a simultaneous estimate of risk aversion ? and the time preference discount rate ? perindividual. This can be done because the consumption of a large prize is smoothed over a largertime period. It...

Prospective economic developments depend on the behavior of consumer spending. A key question is whether private expenditures recover once social distancing restrictions are lifted or whether the COVID-19 crisis has a sustained impact on consumer confidence, preferences, and, hence, spending....

This paper explores whether and why the pandemic differentially altered women and men's consumption behavior. After the 2020 wave of lockdown restrictions were lifted, women reduced consumption more than men. Data on self-reported reasons for consuming less reveals that gender differences in...

We investigate whether US households possess advance information about their future income and what this means for consumption insurance. Based on insights from a theoretical model, we propose a new test to detect advance information, which requires only panel data on consumption and income....

We investigate the importance of aggregate and consumer-specific or idiosyncratic labour income risk for aggregate consumption changes in the US over the period 1952-2001. Theoretically, the effect of labour income risk on consumption changes is decomposed into an aggregate and into an...

We develop a novel argument why better public information can help countries to insure against idiosyncratic risk. Representative agents of developing and industrial countries receive public and private signals on their future income realization and engage in risk-sharing contracts with limited...

When the financial positions of pension funds worsen, regulations prescribe that pension funds reduce the gap between their assets (invested contributions) and their liabilities (accumulated pension promises). This paper quantifies the business cycle effects and distributional implications of...

The ratio of consumption to total household wealth (i.e., tangible assets plus unobserved human wealth) is commonly calculated from the estimation of a log-linear version of the household intertemporal budget constraint as a cointegrating relationship between consumption, assets and earnings...

Since the beginnings of the eighties house prices in the Netherlands haveincreased steadily and considerably. In this paper we study the effect of this developmenton the demand for second mortgages and on the savings of Dutch households. We use the dataof the Dutch socio-economic panel for the...