This is a short survey on consumption theory. Consumption is important to both fluctuation and growth. In addition, consumption introduces some important issues involving financial markets and portfolio decisions. We will describe consumption decisions in a dynamic context. Uncertainty about...

In this paper, a stochastic endogenous aggregative growth model is constructed and two main results are established, based on endogenous horizon of the economy and endogenous terminal capital stock, which is also efficient capital accumulation in some sense. First, strong turnpike theorems under...

Households who wish to extract home equity through refinancing their mortgage face a hidden transaction cost. The real value of the fixed nominal mortgage payment declines over time with inflation. The change in the real value of the mortgage payments from taking on a new mortgage is positive...

This paper derives the general equilibrium effects of rational inattention (or RI; Sims 2003, 2010) in a model of incomplete income insurance (Huggett 1993, Wang 2003). We show that, under the assumption of CARA utility with Gaussian shocks, the Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH) arises in...

In this paper, we examine the joint consumption-portfolio decision of an agent with limited information-processing capacity (rational inattention or RI) in the sense of Sims (2003) within a non-linear-quadratic (non-LQ) setting. Our model predicts that, as processing capacity falls, agents...

We examine the optimal consumption decisions of households in a micro-founded framework that assumes two financial frictions: heterogeneity between borrowing and saving households, and endogenous default. We study default in the context of two-period overlapping processes of consumer behavior,...

We study the asset pricing implications of a general equilibrium Lucas endowment economy inhabited by two agents with habit formation preferences. Preferences are modeled either as internal or external habits. We allow for agents' heterogeneity in relative risk aversion and habit strength. We...

This paper explores the microfoundations of consumption models and quantifies the macro implications of consumption heterogeneity. We propose a new empirical method to estimate the response of consumption to permanent and transitory income shocks for different groups of households. We then apply...

A well-established result in the literature is that Social Security tends to reduce steady state welfare in a standard life cycle model. However, less is known about the historical effects of the program on agents who were alive when the program was adopted. In a computational life cycle model...

This paper studies the link between rising income uncertainty and household fertility patterns in an Aiyagari-Bewley-Huggett framework augmented to include fertility decisions and infertility risk. Building on Becker and Tomes (1976), I model fertility decisions as sequential, irreversible...