While recently more and more research has focused on the aggregate response of consumption to income shocks, little is known about how this response differs for households at different ends of the income distribution. This paper investigates how consumption reacts to transitory and permanent...

Contrary to the implications of economic theory, consumption inequality in the US did not react to the increases in income inequality during the last three decades. This paper investigates if a change in the type of income inequality - from permanent to transitory - or a change in the ability to...

According to the German SAVE survey, more than 40 percent of households regularly save fixed amounts rather than flexibly adjusting savings to income variations as assumed by the Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH). Fixed amount saving behaviour could thus imply a challenge to PIH-based standard...

According to the German SAVE survey, more than 40 percent of households regularly save fixed amounts rather than flexibly adjusting savings to income variations as assumed by the Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH). Fixed amount saving behaviour could thus imply a challenge to PIH-based standard...

The euro area is experiencing a severe and highly complex crisis. It comprises three problem areas, the difficulties of some highly indebted European sovereigns to ascertain funding at palatable cost, the disconcerting fragility of the European banking system and disappointing growth prospects...

Macroeconomics must take radical uncertainty into account, if it aims at contributing to the solution of serious real-world problems such as climate change. Allowing for radical uncertainty must happen at two levels: the level of modeling and the level of the scientifi c discipline. I argue that...

In light of the rising political and economic uncertainty in Europe, we aim to provide a basic understanding of the impact of economic policy uncertainty and financial market uncertainty on a set of macroeconomic variables such as production, consumption and investment. In this paper, we apply a...

We study the time-varying impact of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) on the US Economy by using a VAR with time-varying coefficients. The coefficients are allowed to evolve gradually over time which allows us to discover structural changes without imposing them a priori. We find three different...

Recent events such as the financial and sovereign debt crisis have triggered an increase in European Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU). We use a TVP-FAVAR model with hierarchical priors on the hyperparameters to investigate the effect of EPU on a wide range of macroeconomic variables for eleven...

The euro area is experiencing a severe and highly complex crisis. It comprises three problem areas, the difficulties of some highly indebted European sovereigns to ascertain funding at palatable cost, the disconcerting fragility of the European banking system and disappointing growth prospects...