Survey data on household expectations of inflation are routinely used in economic analysis, yet it is not clear to what extent households are able to articulate their expectations in survey interviews. We propose an alternative approach to recovering households' implicit expectations of...

We investigate, using the 2002 US Health and Retirement Study, the factors influencing individuals' insecurity and expectations about terrorism, and study the effects these last have on households' portfolio choices and spending patterns. We find that females, the religiously devout, those...

We investigate, using the 2002 US Health and Retirement Study, the factors influencing individuals' insecurity and expectations about terrorism, and study the effects these last have on households' portfolio choices and spending patterns. We find that females, the religiously devout, those...

Intertemporal decision making of a private household depends on its expected income distribution. Since an important feature of labour market institutions in modern welfare states is to provide cash transfers as income replacement in case of unemployment, it is hypothesised that unemployment...

Evaluating a new survey dataset of German consumers, we test whether individual consumption plans are formed according to an Euler equation derived from consumption life-cycle models. Estimating several consumption Euler equations, the results are mostly in line with the theory: We find evidence...

Evaluating a new survey dataset of German consumers, we test whether individual consumption plans are formed according to an Euler equation derived from consumption life-cycle models. Estimating several consumption Euler equations, the results are mostly in line with the theory: We find evidence...

We use rich microdata from the 1951 Survey of Consumer Finances to study inflation expectations and consumption in the United States around the start of the Korean War. At the time, the Treasury required the Federal Reserve to hold nominal interest rates constant, so increases in expected...

Using data from the Business Surveys Unit of the European Commission as a long-running-continental-scale experiment, this paper examines how, and how accurately, people assess economic systems. Data show both commonsense (e.g. people know the past better than the future) and puzzling results...

Intertemporal substitution is at the heart of modern macroeconomics and finance as well as economic policymaking, but a large fraction of a representative population of men – those below the top of the distribution by cognitive abilities (IQ) – do not change their consumption propensities...

Consumers' inflation expectations play a key role in the monetary transmission mechanism. As such, it is crucial for monetary policymakers to understand what they are and how they are formed. In this paper we introduce the (un)certainty channel as means to shed light on some of the more puzzling...