We extend a semi-structural model of household income and consumption to allow for dynamic consumption elasticities with respect to transitory income shocks. Likelihood-based inference for our model accurately estimates consumption insurance against income shocks in simulated data from a...

In a recent study, Bianchi (2014) showed that macroeconomic conditions (i.e. average unemployment rate) during the years of emerging adulthood (ages 18-25) are inversely related to adult narcissism. Fletcher (2015) called into question the robustness of the results and Grijalva et al. (2015)...

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...

The reallocation of mortgage debt to low-income or marginally qualified borrowers plays a central role in many explanations of the early 2000s housing boom. We show that such a reallocation never occurred, as the distribution of mortgage debt with respect to income changed little even as 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...

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...

Current cohorts of young adults entered adulthood during an international labor and housing market crisis of a severity not experienced since the Great Depression. Concerns have arisen over the impacts on young adults' employment, income, wealth, and living arrangements, and about whether these...

The reallocation of mortgage debt to low-income or marginally qualified borrowers plays a central role in many explanations of the early 2000s housing boom. We show that such a reallocation never occurred, as the distribution of mortgage debt with respect to income changed little even as the...