The aim of this paper is to analyse precautionary saving associated with income risk over the last two decades in Spain; some empirical evidence seems to point to the extension of temporary job contracts in those years as an important source of uncertainty for Spanish households. I use a...

Was the increase in income inequality in the US due to permanent shocks or merely to an increase in the variance of transitory shocks? The implications for consumption and welfare depend crucially on the answer to this question. We use CEX repeated cross-section data on consumption and income to...

Using data from a unique pricing experiment, we investigate Vickrey’s conjecture that responsive pricing can be used to smooth both predictable and unpredictable demand shocks. Our evidence shows that increasing the responsiveness of price to demand conditions reduces the magnitude of...

The German population has good financial knowledge measured on the basis of three financial literacy questions. Around 85 % of the individuals comprehend the functioning of interest and inflation. And 60 % of the individuals understand the relationship of risk and diversification. Overall around...

This model is the first to solve for the optimal timing of childbirth and number of children in a continuous time framework simultaneously. The model depicts how changes in wage at different stages of an individual’s life influence the timing decision of childbirth and the optimal number of...

Purpose – China's remarkable income growth has changed the food landscape in recent years. Chinese consumers are demanding greater food quantity and quality and changing the nutrient content of their diets. Most food demand studies are based on data from earlier time periods before these...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough analysis of meat demand in China and predict future trends in meat consumption. Design/methodology/approach – Expenditure as well as Marshallian and Hicksian demand elasticities of various meats in China are evaluated using the...

Using the Johansen procedure I test for cointegration between consumption, private disposable income and inflation for 20 OECD countries over the period 1955-1994. There is evidence of cointegration for all countries. Plausible long-run consumption functions are obtained for 18 countries, and...

In this article we characterize the evolution of inequality in hourly wages, hours of work, labor earnings, household disposable income and household consumption for Spain between 1985 and 2000. We look at both the Encuesta Continua de Presupuestos Familiares and the European Household Community...

In this paper, we document some features of the distribution of income, consumption and wealth in Canada using survey data from many different sources. We find that wage and income inequality have increased substantially over the last 30 years, but that much of this rise was offset by the tax...