This paper finds an optimal mechanism for selling an indivisible good to consumers who may be budget-constrained. Unlike the case where buyers are not budget constrained, a single posted price is not typically optimal. An optimal mechanism generally consists of a continuum of lotteries indexed...

This paper employs a synthetic cohort technique and Consumer Expenditure Survey data to construct average age-profiles of consumption and income over the working lives of typical households across different education and occupation groups.

This paper exploits a natural experiment provided by the pattern of payroll taxation in the U.S. to test whether household consumption responds to predictable changes in after-tax income.