This is a short survey on consumption theory. Consumption is important to both fluctuation and growth. In addition, consumption introduces some important issues involving financial markets and portfolio decisions. We will describe consumption decisions in a dynamic context. Uncertainty about...

This study sheds new light on the question of whether or not sentiment surveys, and the expectations derived from them, are relevant to forecasting economic growth and stock returns, and whether they contain information that is orthogonal to macroeconomic and financial data. I examine 16...

This paper discusses the links between earnings, consumption and economic welfare inequality. It places emphasis on the role of leisure and labor supply in the assessment of cross-household inequality and argues that the documented increase of such inequality has its origin in the labor market....

A theory in which the timing of consumer expectation adjustments is endogenously state-dependent and stochastic is proposed. These expectation adjustments generate highly heterogenous consumption responses to income windfalls: many households do not respond, those who do over-react, the marginal...

We analyze efficient risk-sharing arrangements when the value from deviating is determined endogenously by another risk sharing arrangement. Coalitions form to insure against idiosyncratic income risk. Self-enforcing contracts for both the original coalition and any coalition formed (joined)...

This paper characterizes the stationary equilibrium of a continuous-time neoclassical production economy with capital accumulation in which households can insure against idiosyncratic income risk through long-term insurance contracts. Insurance companies operating in perfectly competitive...

I document a statistical link between old-age dependency ratios and average markups. I propose that a mechanism whereby households develop deep habits in consumption as they age could explain this feature of the data. I show that when this mechanism is embedded in an overlapping generations New...

We analytically show that a common across rich/poor individuals Stone-Geary utility function with subsistence consumption in the context of a simple two-asset portfolio-choice model is capable of qualitatively and quantitatively explaining: (i) the higher saving rates of the rich, (ii) the...

This paper analyzes dynamic equilibrium risk sharing contracts between profit-maximizing intermediaries and a large pool of ex-ante identical agents that face idiosyncratic income uncertainty that makes them heterogeneous ex-post. In any given period, after having observed her income, the agent...