This paper estimates the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption (sigma). We exploit a natural experiment provided by a change in the Indian banking legislation which authorized all the deposit collecting institutions to offer a higher interest rate on deposits to citizens above...

This paper presents the novel implications of introducing price rigidities into a model of good-specific habit formation, for the response of private consumption following a positive government spending shock. With 'deep' habits in demand, the price elasticity of demand rises after the fiscal...

Using a heterogeneous agent model calibrated to match measured spending dynamics over four years following an income shock (Fagereng, Holm, and Natvik (2021)), we assess the effectiveness of three fiscal stimulus policies employed during recent recessions. Unemployment insurance (UI) extensions...

We investigate the impact of the universal stimulus payments (100-350 thousand KRW per person) distributed by the largest Korean province of Gyeonggi under the COVID-19 pandemic on household consumption using large-scale credit and debit card data from the Korea Credit Bureau. As the neighboring...

We study how household concerns about their future financial situation may affect the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a representative survey of UK households to compute the MPC from a hypothetical transfer of £500. Our main finding points to a key role...

Households in the Nielsen Consumer Panel were surveyed about their 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment. In estimates identified by the randomized timing of disbursement, the average household's spending rose by ten percent the week it received a Payment and remained high cumulating to 1.5–3.8...

We use a novel panel with detailed transaction records of more than one million de-identified individuals to study the effect of a large-scale Chinese government-issued digital coupon program on consumer spending. At the core of this stimulus program are a set of salient features that drive the...

We estimate the distribution of marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) using a novel clustering approach that generalizes the fuzzy C-means algorithm to regression settings. We apply the estimator to the 2008 stimulus payments, exploiting the randomized timing of disbursements, and find...

We study the spending response at offline retailers to China's Singles Day, the world's largest E-Commerce shopping holiday. Consumer's credit and debit card spending at the brick-and-mortar stores increases by 10.6% on the Singles Day during 2013-2017. The increase is concentrated in physical...

This paper investigates a number of general phenomena connected with consumer behaviour in response to a severe economic shock, using billions of French card transactions measured before and during the COVID-19 epidemic. We examine changes in consumer mobility, anticipatory behaviour in response...