In this paper, we use high-frequency transaction data to develop a weekly tracker for private consumption expenditures. Furthermore, we apply the transaction data in a nowcasting experiment and compare their performance with other, readily available indicators that are regularly linked to...

Recessions and expansions are often caused or reinforced by developments in private consumption - the largest component of aggregate demand - which, as a result, varies over the business cycle. As such, an accurate measurement of the cyclical component of consumption and an understanding of its...

This paper investigates the impact of fiscal policy on private consumption and labor supply in the UK economy using time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) with stochastic volatility for the period Q2 1987 to Q2 2017. It considers fiscal variables such as government expenditure...

This paper investigates consumption pattern of rural and urban households in Afghanistan. Over the years, the economy has undergone significant structural shifts. Millions of households have experienced dramatic welfare transformation causing substantial changes in the consumption pattern. The...

This paper uses data taken from the tax returns of all Icelandic taxpayers in 2005-2019, a period that saw large changes in disposable income around the country's financial crisis in 2008, to plot the life-cycle path of consumption and income for different education groups and to estimate the...

Uninsurable income risk is often cited as an explanation for empirical deviations from the Lifecycle/Permanent-Income Hypothesis such as the hump-shaped lifecycle profile of mean consumption. In this paper, we solve a lifecycle consumption model using a calibrated income process that matches the...

The life-cycle consumption and permanent income hypotheses predict that if workers face greater likelihood of unemployment in the future that lowers expected future income, they will save more today. In this paper, we test this hypothesis by looking at the expenditure response of workers to the...

Smoother labor incomes alleviate credit constraints by reducing workers' desire to borrow, and prospects of upward income mobility have smaller beneficial effects for currently poor workers when borrowing constraints are binding. These simple theoretical insights are consistent with the...