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 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...

This paper is an attempt to answer the long standing question of whether more affluent households save a larger fraction of their income. The major difficulty in empirically assessing the relationship between incomes and saving rates is to construct a credible proxy for long-run income - purged...

Many myths surround the Generation X members. Among them, the term "McJobs" is often used to describe the difficulties they have experienced on the labour market. It is justified to claim that they had a more complicated career path in comparison with other generations. However, what is really...

A guaranteed income supplement (GIS) recipient will have at least 50 percent of any registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) income clawed back on the margin. Resulting RRSP effective rates of return during retirement can often be low or even negative relative to the alternative of cashing out...

We use new, high-quality UK panel data to document the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic at an individual level, from April 2020 to March 2021. We focus on where and to what extent pre-existing labour market and financial inequalities have been exacerbated. Our story is more nuanced than...