This paper builds a unifying framework based on the theory of intertemporal consumption choices that brings together the limited participation-based explanation of the C-CAPM poor empirical performance and the transaction costs-based explanation of incomplete portfolios. Using the implications...

Over much of the past 25 years, the cycles of house price and consumption growth have been closely synchronised. Three main hypotheses for this co-movement have been proposed in the literature. First, that an increase in house prices raises households' wealth, particularly for those in a...

East Asia and Latin America have diverged in several dimensions in the past three decades. This paper compares household saving behavior in two countries in each region (Mexico, Peru, Thailand and Taiwan). We make four contributions. First, we provide the first comparisons of savings in these...

We investigate the empirical significance of borrowing constraints in the market for consumer loans. We set up a theoretical model of consumer loan demand, which in the presence of credit rationing implies restrictions on the elasticities of loan demand with respect to the interest rate and the...

In this paper, we use an economic model to analyse data from a major randomized social experiment, namely PROGRESA in Mexico, and to evaluate its impact on school participation. We show the usefulness of using experimental data to estimate a structural economic model as well as the importance of...

Presents information about opportunity cost of attendance to school, touching on issues of the proper dimensioning of cash subsidies, the adequacy of the conditionality and operational issues associated with conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs. It then analyzes the challenge of increasing...

This discussion paper was presented in the seminar "First Meeting of the Social Policy Monitoring Network: Conditional Cash-Transfer Programs". In this paper the authors use an economic model to analyze data from a major randomized social experiment, namely PROGRESA in Mexico, and to evaluate...

Presents information about opportunity cost of attendance to school, touching on issues of the proper dimensioning of cash subsidies, the adequacy of the conditionality and operational issues associated with conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs. It then analyzes the challenge of increasing...

Previous empirical literature has found a sharp decline in consumption during the first years of retirement implying that individuals do not save enough for their retirement. This phenomenon has been called the retirement consumption puzzle. In contrast to some of the previous studies, the...