Both personal bankruptcy and redistributive taxes can insure households' consumption risk and both vary considerably across US states. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptions less attractive both for the intratemporal insurance and for...

In this paper, I conduct an international comparison of the financial health of households using data on household wealth and indebtedness for the Group of Seven (G7) countries and show that, even though household borrowings in Japan were the highest among the G7 countries, at least until 2000,...

We provide a model with endogenous portfolios of secured and unsecured household debt. Secured debt is collateralized by durables whereas unsecured debt can be discharged in bankruptcy procedures. We show that the model matches the main quantitative characteristics of observed wealth and debt...

We use a new panel dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how consumers responded to the 2001 federal income tax rebates. We estimate the monthly response of credit card payments, spending, and debt, exploiting the unique, randomized timing of the rebate disbursement. We find that on average...

We use data from the 2009 Internet Survey of the Health and Retirement Study to examine the consumption impact of wealth shocks and unemployment during the Great Recession in the US. We find that many households experienced large capital losses in housing and in their financial portfolios, and...

This paper presents new survey evidence on workers' response to the 2011 payroll tax cuts. While workers intended to spend 10 to 18 percent of their tax-cut income, they reported actually spending 28 to 43 percent of the funds. This is higher than estimates from studies of recent tax cuts, and...

In dieser Analyse schätzen wir den Einfluss von Gewohnheits-(Habits) gegenüber Vergleichsmotiven (Envy) zur Erklärung des Konsumverhaltens US-amerikanischer Haushalte. Wir verwenden Daten der seit August 2013 erhältlichen Konsumerhebungen des Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) für den...

Modern consumer theories are built upon the premise of the forward looking behavior of households. While most of the empirical studies at micro level are based on Euler equation, there have been few to estimate the household consumption function and test the implication of forward looking...