In this paper we document significantly steeper declines in nondurable expenditures in the UK compared to the US, in spite of income paths being similar. We explore several possible causes, including different employment paths, housing ownership and expenses, levels and paths of health status,...

In this paper we document significantly steeper declines in nondurable expenditures in the UK compared to the US, in spite of income paths being similar. We explore several possible causes, including different employment paths, housing ownership and expenses, levels and paths of health status,...

Our data indicate significantly steeper declines in nondurable expenditures in the UK compared to the US in spite of income paths at older ages exhibiting similar declines. We examine several possible causes, including different employment paths, housing ownership and expenses, levels and paths...

Household debt rose sharply in the United Kingdom in the decade before the financial crisis. This paper uses household level microdata to investigate the relationship between mortgage debt and consumption. We find evidence that more highly indebted groups of households made larger cuts in...

Findings in behavioral science, including psychology, have been influencing policies and reforms in many nations. “Choice architecture” can affect outcomes even if material incentives are not involved. In some contexts, default rules, simplification, and uses of social norms have been found...

Common preference models of family behavior imply income pooling, a restriction on family demand functions such that only the sum of husband's income and wife's income affect the allocation of goods and time. Testing the pooling hypothesis is difficult because most family income sources are not...

Various deviations from the Permanent Income consumption model with rational expectations have been discussed in the literature, including loss aversion and liquidity constraints. In the existing literature, these two types of consumption asymmetry are usually considered as mutually exclusive....

We test the interest rate sensitivity of subprime credit card borrowers using a unique panel data set from a UK credit card company. We were given details of a randomized interest rate experiment conducted by the lender between October 2006 and January 2007. Access to such information is rare....

We test the interest rate sensitivity of subprime credit card borrowers using a unique panel data set from a UK credit card company. What is novel about our contribution is that we were given details of a randomized interest rate experiment conducted by the lender between October 2006 and...

This paper deals with different concepts of income elasticities of demand for a heterogenous population and the relationship between individual and aggregate elasticities is analyzed. In general, the aggregate elasticity is not equal to the mean of individual elasticities. The difference depends...