This article aims to integrate temptation preferences into the theory of optimal taxation with heterogenous agents and asymmetric information. Consumers are tempted to over-consume a commodity which may lead to an over-supply of labor. Resisting this temptation implies a utility cost and any...

This paper studies the concavity of the consumption function of a habit-forming consumer with convex absolute risk tolerance. Habit formation is incorporated into a finite-horizon consumption-saving model of Carroll and Kimball (1996). I derive a condition under which the consumption function is...

The nexus between debt and inequality has attracted considerable scholarly attention in the wake of the global financial crisis. One prominent candidate to explain the striking co-evolution of income inequality and private debt in this period has been the theory of upward-looking consumption...

We present a methodology for the structural empirical analysis of household consumption and time use behaviour under marital stability. Our approach is of the revealed preference type and non-parametric, meaning that it does not require a prior functional specification of individual utilities....

We study how 3,534 beneficiaries of PROSPERA, Mexico's cash transfer program, smooth food consumption around the transfer payday, an anticipated and transitory income shock. We find that food consumption and food security do not change around the transfer payday, including for recipients with...

We provide the first estimate of the elasticity of marginal utility of consumption, η, for a post-transition economy in the Central & Eastern European region, the Czech Republic, based on individual-level data. The parameter η is a crucial component of the social discount rate (SDR), which...