A principal motivation for Unemployment Insurance (UI) schemes is to support consumption smoothing. The magnitude of the consumption smoothing benefits of UI depend on the extent to which households are liquidity constrained. We use a survey of unemployed people to examine how a job loss impacts...

If access to credit is limited (especially when young or unemployed) but ”bad” jobs are easy to come by, then job seekers might use short term employment in undesirable jobs as a way to finance consumption during subsequent unemployed search for a “good” job. In this paper we explore...

The costs of involuntary job loss are of substantial research and policy interest. We consider the measurement of the cost of job displacement with household expenditure data. With a Canadian panel survey of individuals who experienced a job separation, we compare the consumption growth of...

Recent research has demonstrated that some households cut back on expenditures in an unemployment spell. Moreover, some of these households respond to variation in the transitory income provided by unemployment insurance benefits. This suggests that these households are constrained in the sense...

We present theoretical and empirical results on consumption during an unemployment spell. The theory model extends the conventional intertemporal allocation model to take explicit account of the fact that households buy clothing and small durable goods (such as pillows and plates) that are...

In many research areas it is desirable to have information on household total expenditure ("consumption"). We draw evidence from several sources on the usefulness of recall consumption questions. We conclude that valid information can be collected by adding specific recall questions to general...

The life-cycle model is the standard framework which economists use to think about the intertemporal allocation of time, money and effort. The model suggests that households should `smooth' expenditures. One of the strengths of the model is that it provides a single framework which integrates...

Wives are typically younger than their husbands and women typically live longer than men. These two facts mean that for a typical married couple, wives have more incentive to save for old age than do husbands. This paper presents a theoretical model of the determination of household saving and...

We use a survey of unemployed people to examine how a job loss impacts on household expenditures. The principle focus is on the effect of the level of income replacement provided by Unemployment Insurance. We restrict attention to a sub-sample of respondents who are still in their first spell of...