The aim of this paper is to understand what a recession means for individual consumers, and to model in a life-cycle framework how individuals respond to recessions. Our focus is on the sharp increase in savings rates that have been observed in the current and recent recessions. We show...

Despite the centrality of credit and debt in the financial lives of Americans, little is known about how U.S. consumers' access and utilization of credit changes in the short and long term, and how these changes are related to changes in U.S. consumers' debt. This paper uses data from the...

The aim of this paper is to understand what a recession means for individual consumers, and to model in a life-cycle framework how individuals respond to recessions. Our focus is on the sharp increase in savings rates that have been observed in the current and recent recessions. We show...

During the last decades households in the U.S. have experienced that residential house prices move in a persistent manner, i.e. that returns are positively serially correlated. Since an owner-occupied home is usually the largest investment of a household it is important to understand how...

Using credit report records and data collected from several household surveys, we analyze changes in household debt and saving during the 2007 recession. We find that, while different segments of the population were affected in distinct ways, depending on whether they owned a home, whether they...

The article considers the science problem of identification of a life cycle of an economic agent in particular and of organizational-economic system in general. As an alternative solution of this problem the author proposes to use an universal index – stability index, which is directly linked...

Despite the centrality of credit and debt in the financial lives of Americans, little is known about how U.S. consumers' access and utilization of credit changes in the short and long term, and how these changes are related to changes in U.S. consumers' debt. This paper uses data from the...

This paper examines an unconventional, but potentially effective, new fiscal policy tool that can increase saving during good times and increase spending during bad times -- a cyclical matching rate on contributions to retirement savings accounts. The combination of matching rates and matching...

This paper studies the incentive costs of housing booms. We use the type and actual time stamps of 9.3 million credit card transactions by over 200,000 cardholders from a large commercial bank to detect non-work-related behavior during work hours. After positive shocks to house prices, employees...

We explore the dynamics of demand for n designs of a good when agents have preferences for (anti-)conformity. Agents differ in their social status and each agent seeks to imitate those of higher status and to distinguish herself from those of lower status, relative to her own status. In each...