We show individuals investments chase stock index returns and are financed by foregoing consumption, even after controlling for individual-account level portfolio income effects and other high dimensional fixed effects. This effect only exists for positive stock index returns with no effects for...

This paper tests one specific monetary transmission mechanism through households: portfolio rebalancing. We use a unique panel dataset of household's credit and debit card spending, ATM withdrawals, financial investments into risky assets such as mutual funds and equities, as well as bank...

To incentivize households to increase private savings, the Indian government implemented in July 2014 a new tax-subsidized saving policy that largely incentivizes homeowners by allowing them to exempt an additional 50,000 INR ($833) of the mortgage principal and interest payments from taxable...

Measuring the consumption response to a tax regime has been a central issue in the optimal design of fiscal policy. This study leverages a large-scale natural experiment in India, the 2017 Goods-Service-Tax (GST) Reform, to quantify its impact on suppliers' pricing strategy and consumer...

We study how consumer spending responds to digital payments, using the differential switch to digital payments across consumers induced by the sudden 2016 Indian Demonetization for identification. Usage of digital payments rose by 3.38 percentage points and monthly spending increased by 3% for...

We utilize monthly individual-level financial data and item-level supermarket sales data to study how consumption responds to one of the costliest natural disasters in India. We find that consumption dropped by 11% during the disaster, 65% of which was recovered after the disaster. On average,...

We utilize monthly individual-level financial data and item-level supermarket sales data to study how consumption responds to one of the costliest natural disasters in India. We find that consumption dropped by 11% during the disaster, 65% of which was recovered after the disaster. On average,...

Using a novel scanner data and difference-in-difference strategy, we assess how consumers respond to a large-scale tax reform in India that introduces exogenous variations in tax rate changes at the product level. We show evidence of a strong and persistent spending response to tax rate changes....