A major difficulty faced by researchers who want to study the consumption and savings behavior of households is the lack of reliable panel data on household expenditures. One possibility is to use surveys that follow the same households over time, but such data are rare and they typically have...

A set of newly added questions in the 2011 to 2014 Bank of England/NMG Consulting Survey reveals that British households are estimated to change their consumption by significantly more in reaction to temporary and unanticipated falls in income than to rises of the same size. Household balance...

This paper attempts to find out the explanatory power of observed changes in the distribution of current income in explaining the relative change in aggregate consumption using the distributional approach of aggregation by Hildenbrand and Kneip (1999, 2001). The coefficients in the aggregate...

This paper considers how monetary policy produces heterogeneous effects on euro area households, depending on the composition of their income and on the components of their wealth. We first review the existing evidence on how monetary policy affects income and wealth inequality. We then...

We document a decline in the frequency of shopping trips in the U.S. since 1980 and consider its implications for the measurement of consumption inequality. A decline in shopping frequency as households stock up on storable goods (i.e. inventory behavior) will lead to a rise in expenditure...

We develop the approach of Gokhale, Kotlikoff amp; Sabelhaus (1996), based on the lifecycle model of savings, to decompose the differences in the national saving rates between the UK, US and Italy. Our work suggests that the US saving rate is lower principally because Americans on average retire...

This paper presents a simple illustrative post-Kaleckian model of distribution and growth that incorporates personal income inequality and interdependent social norms. The model shows in an easily accessible manner how personal and functional income inequality can potentially have contrary...

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...

Prices of real and financial assets fell substantially in the UK during 2008-09. The fourth wave of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) was in the field throughout this 'financial crisis'. We use these data and earlier ELSA waves first to document the effect of the crisis on the...