The empirical literature has demonstrated that housing assets exhibit larger wealth effects than stocks (or, more broadly, financial assets), which is often interpreted as a larger MPC (Marginal Propensity of Consumption) out of housing wealth. Still, the question remains as to whether this...

This paper addresses the credit card debt puzzle using a generalization of the buffer-stock consumption model with long-term revolving debt contracts. Closely resembling actual US credit card law, we assume that card issuers can always deny their cardholders access to new debt, but that they...

The vast majority of household wealth in the U.S. is held in illiquid assets, primarily housing, making households vulnerable to unexpected income shocks. To rationalize this preference for illiquidity, we build a life-cycle model where households are tempted to consume their liquid wealth but...

We exploit inheritance episodes to provide novel causal evidence on long-run saving dynamics. For identification, we combine a panel of administrative wealth reports with the unexpected timing of sudden parental deaths. After inheritance, net worth converges towards the path established before...

Long-run saving dynamics are a crucial component of consumption-saving behavior. This paper makes two contributions to the consumption literature. First, we exploit inheritance episodes to provide novel causal evidence on the long-run effects of a large financial windfall on saving behavior. For...

On the basis of a concatenation of fifteen Belgian household budget surveys from 1995/96 to 2010, we investigate the impact of demographic factors, such as ageing and changing household composition, on saving behaviour. Not focusing on high frequency events (e.g. business cycles and unexpected...

While it is common to use income uncertainty to explain household saving decisions, there is much disagreement about the importance of precautionary saving. This paper suggests that income uncertainty is not an important motive for saving, although households do have other precautionary reasons...

We document a within-month mortality cycle where deaths decline before the first day of the month and spike after the first. This cycle is present across a wide variety of causes and demographic groups. A similar cycle exists for a range of economic activities, suggesting the mortality cycle may...

This article reviews recent scientific literature on consumer financial decisions over the life cycle, outlining its implications for the design of pension plans. It begins with a review of advances in the theory of rational financial planning and wealth management. It then summarizes the recent...

Carroll and Kimball (1996) show that the consumption function for an agent with time-separable, isoelastic preferences is concave in the presence of income uncertainty. In this paper I show that concavity breaks down if we abandon time-separability. Namely, if an agent maximizing an isoelastic...