Idiosyncratic labor incomes are typically modeled either by stochastic processes with heterogeneous income profiles (HIPs) or restricted income profiles (RIPs). The HIP assumes that individual labor income grows deterministically at an unobserved rate and contains a persistent but stationary...

Are households more likely to be homeowners when “housing risk” is higher? We show that home-ownership rates and loan-to-value (LTV ) ratios at the city level are strongly negatively correlated with local house price volatility. However, causal inference is confounded by house price levels,...

We propose a new category of consumption goods, memorable goods, that generate a utility flow even after physical consumption. Empirically, memorable goods expenditures exhibit frequent zero monthly purchases and lumpy expenditure spikes. Memorable goods expenditures are 20% the size of...

Overconfidence is a widely documented phenomenon. Empirical evidence reveal two types of overconfidence in financial markets: investors both overestimate the average rate of return to their assets and underestimate uncertainty associated with the return. This paper explores implications of...

We propose and estimate a model of family job search and wealth accumulation with data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This dataset reveals a very asymmetric labor market for household members who share that their job finding is stimulated by their partners' job...

We propose and estimate a model of family job search and wealth accumulation with data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This dataset reveals a very asymmetric labor market for household members who share that their job finding is stimulated by their partners' job...

This paper measures the effect of the ongoing extensions of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits on the unemployment rate using a calibrated structural model that features job search and consumption-saving decisions, skill depreciation, UI eligibility, and UI benefit extensions that capture what...

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...

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...

This paper examines the sources of stickiness in aggregate consumption growth. We first derive a dynamic consumption equation which encompasses many recent developments in consumption theory: habit formation, intertemporal substitution effects, consumption based on current income, and...