Household borrowing and spending rise with house prices, particularly for leveraged households, but household spending is not consumption. We propose an alternative borrow-to-invest motive by which house price gains affect household spending on residential investment: rational, leveraged...

We use new, high-quality UK panel data to document the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic at an individual level, from April 2020 to March 2021. We focus on where and to what extent pre-existing labour market and financial inequalities have been exacerbated. Our story is more nuanced than...

We investigate the life cycle patterns of households spending on medium value durables. We use panel data on expenditures on appliances and consumer electronics the British Household Panel Study between 1997 and 2008. In cross section, expenditures for appliances and consumer electronics...

This paper examines trends in household consumption and saving behaviour in each of the last three recessions in the UK. We identify several dimensions along which the most recent recession (the so-called 'Great Recession') has been different from those that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s....

We use direct evidence on credit constraints to study their importance for household consumption growth and for welfare. We distentangle the direct effect on consumption growth of a currently binding credit constraints from the indirect effect of a potentially binding credit constraint which...

Unique longitudinal probabilistic expectations data from the Berea Panel Study, which cover both the college and early post-college periods, are used to examine young adults' beliefs about their future incomes. We introduce a new measure of the ex post accuracy of beliefs, and two new approaches...

Unique longitudinal probabilistic expectations data from the Berea Panel Study, which cover both college and early post-college periods, are used to examine young adults’ beliefs about their future incomes. We introduce a new measure of the ex post accuracy of beliefs, and two new approaches...