Three shocks, distinguished by whether their effects are permanent or transitory, are identified to characterize the post-war dynamics of aggregate consumer spending, labor earnings, and household wealth. The first shock accounts for virtually all of the variation in consumption and has effects...

In a recent paper (quot;A Primer on the Economics and Time Series Econometrics of Wealth Effects,quot; 2001), Davis and Palumbo investigate the empirical relation between three cointegrated variables: aggregate consumption, asset wealth, and labor income. Although cointegration implies that an...