Showing 1 - 10 of 3,738
Since 1970, housing's relative price, share of expenditure, and ``unaffordability'' have all grown. We estimate housing demand using a novel compensated framework over space and an uncompensated framework over time. Our specifications pass tests imposed by rationality and household mobility....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012455864
Individuals that consume different baskets of goods are differentially affected by relative price changes caused by international trade. We develop a methodology to measure the unequal gains from trade across consumers within countries. The approach requires data on aggregate expenditures and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012458336
At the end of 1998, China launched a government-run mandatory insurance program, the Urban Employee Basic Medical … Insurance (UEBMI), to replace the previous medical insurance system. Using the UEBMI reform in China as a natural experiment … the demand for health-care services. Using data from the 1991-2006 waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we find …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012457793
We build a publicly available platform that tracks economic activity at a granular level in real time using anonymized data from private companies. We report daily statistics on consumer spending, business revenues, employment rates, and other key indicators disaggregated by county, industry,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012481626
We estimate the degree of 'stickiness' in aggregate consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption habits) for thirteen advanced economies. We find that, after controlling for measurement error, consumption growth has a high degree of autocorrelation, with a stickiness...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012464771
We present evidence that many households have only a vague notion of what they are spending on various consumption items. We then develop a life-cycle model that captures this absent-mindedness'. The model generates precautionary spending, whereby absent-minded agents tend to consume more than...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012468478
Are individuals effectively insured against idiosyncratic shocks to income or wealth by either formal or informal mechanisms? This paper shows that under perfect insurance, marginal utility should grow at the same rate for all consumers, and that the distribution of measured consumption growth...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012476422
This paper uses a detailed panel of individual spending, income, account balances, and credit limits from a personal finance management software provider to investigate how expenditures, liquid savings, and consumer debt change around retirement. The longitudinal nature of our data allows us to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012453309
We estimate the effect of information and expertise on consumers' willingness to pay for national brands in physically homogeneous product categories. In a detailed case study of headache remedies we find that more informed or expert consumers are less likely to pay extra to buy national brands,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012458372
We study how monetary policy affects subcomponents of the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCEPI) using local projections. Following a monetary policy contraction, the response of aggregate PCEPI turns significantly negative after over three years. There are stark differences in...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014576652