We ask two questions related to how access to credit affects the nature of business cycles. First, does the standard theory of unsecured credit account for the high volatility and procyclicality of credit and the high volatility and countercyclicality of bankruptcy filings found in U.S. data?...

This paper empirically estimates the critical parameters of private consumption function in Saudi Arabia for the period 1986-2008 by using dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) approach of Stock and Watson (1993). The analysis is based on time series from 1986 to 2008. Time series properties of...

This paper proposes an approximation to the consumption function in the buffer-stock model. The approximation is based on the analytic properties of the consumption function in the buffer-stock model. In such model, the consumption function is increasing and concave and its derivative is bounded...

The application of cointegration and error correction methodology to estimate aggregate consumption equations relating consumer spending to labor income and household wealth shows unequivocally that wealth has significant effect on consumer spending. Still, the long-term marginal propensity to...