Recent research has demonstrated that some households cut back on expenditures in an unemployment spell. Moreover, some of these households respond to variation in the transitory income provided by unemployment insurance benefits. This suggests that these households are constrained in the sense...

Several recent papers have concluded that precautionary saving motives are needed to reconcile data on lifetime patterns of consumption and income with a standard optimising model. In this paper we contest that we necessarily need a precautionary motive and we show that if we take consumption to...

We examine theoretically and empirically consumption over the early part of the life-cycle. The main focus is on the transition from being single to living with someone else. Our theoretical model allows for publicness in consumption; uncertainty concerning marriage; differences between lifetime...

In many research areas it is desirable to have information on household total expenditure (‘consumption’). We draw evidence from several sources on the usefulness of recall consumption questions. We conclude that valid information can be collected by adding specific recall questions to...

This paper investigates the search and consumption behavior of workers as they move between readily available low wage employment and uncertain search for a high wage job. Analytic results derived from our model include: (1) voluntary planned quits occur in a cyclical pattern, (2) consumption...

This paper discusses the determinants of the retirement decision and the implications of retirement on economic well-being. The main contribution of the paper is to formulate the role of individual heterogeneity explicitly. We argue that individual heterogeneity in 1) productivity of market work...