Poor people have, on average, a higher marginal propensity to consume. One (out of many) possible explanations for this is that poverty affects impatience. This would have important implications for monetary and fiscal policy. While some macroeconomists simply assume lower individual discount...

Preferences over wealth can explain why households do not spend more when real interest rates fall, because they save more than optimal under a standard model. However, little is known about preferences over wealth empirically. We run an intentionally simple lab experiment on intertemporal...