We test the hypothesis that consumption smoothing occurs after large, but not small, expected future income shocks. Even though this hypothesis has often been discussed, formal evidence in support of it is rare. We use individual level, monthly, bank account data to examine how expected income...

What explains apparent price rigidity over the business cycle? This paper shows that price fluctuations may be hidden in prices of add ons. Using 10 years of extended warranty data from a nationwide Canadian retailer, we show that extended warranty prices respond strongly to changes in local...

Ackerlof and Shiller (2015), and many others, argue that slot machines are manipulative and deceptive. We examine whether the removal of slots from a specific bar or restaurant impacts bankruptcy filings in the immediate vicinity. Our identification strategy compares consumers that are fractions...

This paper shows that exchange rates respond to only the surprise component of an actual US monetary policy change and that failure to disentangle the surprise component from the actual monetary policy change can lead to an underestimation of the impact of monetary policy, or even to a false...

This paper is the first to utilize the informational content embodied in Federal funds futures contracts for extracting day-to-day changes in expectations of future US monetary policy, in the context of a study of day-to-day exchange rate changes. We analyze more than 12 years of daily exchange...

We test the hypothesis that consumption smoothing occurs after large, but not small, expected future income shocks. Even though this hypothesis has often been discussed, formal evidence in support of it is rare. We use individual level, monthly, bank account data to examine how expected income...