Scientific evidence on the effect of sugar consumption on obesity has propelled policy makers in several states across the U.S. to propose the imposition of a tax on soft drinks sales. In this paper, we look at the effect of two tax events: a 5.5% sales tax on soft drinks imposed by the state of...

Value Added Tax (VAT) as introduced in India at state level from April 1, 2005 is widely acclaimed to be a better system than the sales tax on grounds of efficiency. However policy makers did not consider its impact on the distribution of income. Considering both the distributive and efficiency...

How eff ective is the minimum wage at raising nondurable household consumption through the redistribution of income towards poor workers? Using novel data on retail sales by county, I exploit variation in the minimum wage rates across states and over time to answer this question. I find that a...

The paper shows how limited substitutability in consumption between different classes of goods affects the magnitude and time development of social discount rates. It decomposes the discount rates into an absolute growth and a relative growth or substitutability effect. The paper relates...

It is unlikely that husbands and wives always agree on exactly what public goods to buy. Nor do they necessarily agree on how many hours to work with obvious consequences for the household budget. We therefore model consumption and labor supply behavior of a couple in a non-cooperative setting...

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...

Every year over 20 states offer sales tax holidays (STHs) on specific items like clothes, shoes and other items to encourage consumption, effecting over 100 million consumers. We use a unique dataset of credit cards transaction to study the spending response to these holidays. Using a...

This paper examines the impact of exposure to foreign media on the economic behavior of agents in a totalitarian regime. We study private consumption choices focusing on former East Germany, where differential access to Western television was determined by geographic features. Using data...

We use direct evidence on credit constraints to study their importance for household consumption growth and for welfare. We distentangle the direct effect on consumption growth of a currently binding credit constraints from the indirect effect of a potentially binding credit constraint which...

This paper examines trends in household consumption and saving behaviour in each of the last three recessions in the UK. The 'Great Recession' has been different from those that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. It has been both deeper and longer, but also the composition of the cutbacks in...