This paper estimates the importance of temptation (Gul and Pesendorfer, 2001) for consumption smoothing and asset accumulation in a structural life-cycle model. We use two complementary estimation strategies: first, we estimate the Euler equation of this model; and second we match liquid and...

We formulate a general cointegrated vector autoregressive (CVAR) model that nests both a class of consumption Euler equations and various Keynesian type consumption functions. Using likelihoodbased methods and Norwegian data, we find support for cointegration between consumption, income and...