The effect of wealth on consumption is an issue of longstanding interest to economists. Analysts believe that fluctuations in household wealth have driven major swings in economic activity. This paper considers so-called wealth effects - the impact of changes in wealth on household consumption...

Using micro-level data, we document a systematic, income-related component in household income forecast errors. We show that these errors can be formalized by a modest deviation from rational expectations, where agents overestimate the persistence of their income process. We then investigate the...

This paper uses an estimated Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian (HANK) model to evaluate the quantitative importance of two channels in driving aggre- gate consumption fluctuations in the US: (i) precautionary savings against un- employment risk and (ii) MPC heterogeneity. I find that MPC...