The consumption beta theorem of Breeden makes the expected return on any asset a function only of its covariance with changes in aggregate consumption. It is shown that the theorem is more robust than was indicated by Breeden. The theorem obtains even if one deletes Breeden's assumptions that...

We investigate the stochastic relation between income and consumption (specifically, consumption of food) within a panel of about 2,000 households. Our major findings are: 1. Consumption responds much more strongly to permanent than to transitory movements of income. 2. The response to...

Both economic theory and casual empirical observation of the U.S. economy suggest that spending propensities from temporary tax changes are smaller than those from permanent ones, but neither provides much guidance about the magnitude of this difference. This paper offers new empirical estimates...

Many households hold little wealth, especially liquid wealth. In precautionary savings models, absent preference heterogeneity, these households should display not only higher marginal propensities to consume (MPCs), but also lower average propensities to consume (APCs) and higher future...

Using de-identified bank account data, we show that spending drops sharply at the large and predictable decrease in income arising from the exhaustion of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. We use the high-frequency response to a predictable income decline as a new test to distinguish between...

Can a behavioral sufficient statistic empirically capture cross-consumer variation in behavioral tendencies and help identify whether behavioral biases, taken together, are linked to material consumer welfare losses? Our answer is yes. We construct simple consumer-level behavioral sufficient...

We model visibility bias in the social transmission of consumption behavior. When consumption is more salient than non-consumption, people perceive that others are consuming heavily, and infer that future prospects are favorable. This increases aggregate consumption in a positive feedback loop....

The most common forms of government-mandated job displacement insurance are Severance Pay (SP; lump-sum payments at layoff) and Unemployment Insurance (UI; periodic payments contingent on nonemployment). While there is a vast literature on UI, SP programs have received much less attention, even...