In this paper we introduce price search decision to a life cycle model, and differentiate consumption from expenditure. The consumers with low wealth and bad income shocks search more and pay less which makes their consumption higher than a model without search option. A plausibly calibrated...

In this paper, we differentiate consumption from expenditure by incorporating price search decision into an otherwise standard life-cycle model. In our model, households can pay lower prices for the same consumption good if they allocate more time for price search. We first analytically show...