We use responses to survey questions in the 2010 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth that ask consumers how much of an unexpected transitory income change they would consume. We find that the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is 48 percent on average, and that there is substantial...

We use responses to survey questions in the 2010 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth that ask consumers how much of an unexpected transitory income change they would consume. We find that the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is 48 percent on average, and that there is substantial...

We use responses to survey questions in the 2010 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth that ask consumers how much of an unexpected transitory income change they would consume. We find that the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is 48 percent on average, and that there is substantial...

We use responses to survey questions in the 2010 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth that ask consumers how much of an unexpected transitory income change they would consume. We find that the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is 48 percent on average, and that there is substantial...

We use data from the 2009 Internet Survey of the Health and Retirement Study to examine the consumption impact of wealth shocks and unemployment during the Great Recession in the US. We find that many households experienced large capital losses in housing and in their financial portfolios, and...

Kimball (1990a,b) established that income risk increases the marginal propensity to consume if and only if absolute prudence decreases. We characterize decreasing and increasing multivariate prudence and show that a multidimensional risk increases the marginal propensity to consume if and only...

Kimball, 1990a and Kimball, 1990b established that income risk increases the marginal propensity to consume if and only if absolute prudence decreases. We characterize decreasing and increasing multivariate prudence and show that a multidimensional risk increases the marginal propensity to...

Buffer-stock models of saving are now standard in the consumption literature. This paper builds theoretical foundations for rigorous understanding of the main features of such models, including the existence of a target wealth ratio and the proposition that aggregate consumption growth equals...

We use data from the 2009 Internet Survey of the Health and Retirement Study to examine the consumption impact of wealth shocks and unemployment during the Great Recession in the US. We find that many households experienced large capital losses in housing and in their financial portfolios, and...

We present a macroeconomic model calibrated to match both microeconomic and macroeconomic evidence on household income dynamics. When the model is modified in a way that permits it to match empirical measures of wealth inequality in the U.S., we show that its predictions (unlike those of...