model, and the consumption insurance model) by means of mobility indexes for the underlying consumption distribution. Each … consumption mobility in the data. We then derive the predictions for consumption mobility of the theories of intertemporal choice … and compare them with the actual mobility. The comparison rejects the theory of consumption insurance and the myopic model …

wealth inequality (the cross-sectional dispersion of wealth), wealth mobility (individual transitions across the wealth …

implies absence of consumption mobility between any two time periods. This implication requires knowledge of the evolution of … appropriate non-parametric test and find substantial mobility of consumption even controlling for possible preference shifts and …