This dissertation consists of three essays on high frequency data, volatility, and disaster risk in macroeconomic modeling. In Chapter I, I verify a credit card transaction dataset for Austria and Germany. I use this dataset in Chapter II to investigate the weekly impact of financial market...

We study consumption and welfare inequality by analyzing how households allocate resources - market expenditures and the value of time - to the production of activities. The share of resources allocated to an activity rises or falls with wages, classifying them into luxuries or necessities,...

We analyze the importance of the educated class for the persistence of mass consumption societies in an economy with a hierarchy of needs.Through the demand for managerial talent (which is needed to operate advanced industrial technologies), the latter generate their own demand for skills. In...

We document a significant effect of visible inequality on household spending in the United States from 2010 to 2018, but we do not find a comparable effect before the Great Recession. Our proposed definition of visible inequality refers to differences across households in their expenditures on...

Using disaggregated US household expenditure data, we study the distributional consequences of the US-China trade war. We estimate a highly flexible demand system to compute household-specific price indexes. The increases in US tariffs on Chinese products between 2018 and 2019 led to an average...

We use narrative monetary policy shocks and local projections to estimate the impact of monetary policy on consumption and investment. We use granular data to investigate how the response varies across consumption categories, investment types, and sectors. Our findings indicate that both...

Mozambique is highly vulnerable to climate change. It faces frequent cyclones, floods, and droughts while having limited revenue collection capacity and social protection programmes. This paper assesses the distributional effects of climate shocks on household consumption and explores adaptation...

Aggregate consumption typically exceeds 60 per cent of GDP and should be pivotal in central bank policy models. Most use semi-structural macro-models, yet consumption is usually inadequately specified. We use a systems approach to estimate new equations for South African consumption, house...

We show how tax kinks can be used to estimate the marginal propensity to consume (MPC). Tax kinks create discrete changes in the relationship between taxable income and disposable income, which - under a set of testable assumptions - enables causal identification of the spending response to...

Household heterogeneity has been shown to be an important driver of aggregate demand. In this research, we demonstrate that it also impacts the supply side. We build a model in which heterogeneous households vary in their extent to which they supply production factors (labor and capital). Our...

This paper quantifies mechanisms through which heterogeneity in household finances affects the transmission of monetary policy, considering housing tenure choices over the life cycle. Our analysis also identifies challenges for monetary policy related to housing busts. It focuses on the four...

The study evaluates the effectiveness of Iranian government subsidies for households by comparing the welfare impact of food price shocks with the subsidy payments they receive. This helps us assess the government's efforts to reduce poverty in Iran. The household income and expenditure survey...

This study aims to examine the relationship between government spending and economic development in Kenya, given the lack of consensus on the topic globally. While there is an agreement that some level of government expenditure is necessary for economic development, the specific areas of...

We study households' response to the redistributive effects of inflation combining bank data with an information experiment during historic inflation. Households are generally well-informed about inflation and concerned about its wealth impact; yet, while knowledge about inflation eroding...

We use detailed Norwegian administrative data to identify the income loss associated with the onset of unemployment and analyze the corresponding consumption expenditure response and the extent to which this response is related to household balance sheet components. Unemployment results in a...

From the perspective of domestic market integration, this paper systematically examines the impact of transportation infrastructure conditions on excess sensitivity of household consumption based on the China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) and multi-level matching panel data of transportation...

We present novel findings on the impact of monetary policy on consumer spending behavior using a newly assembled high-frequency household expenditure panel. Leveraging comprehensive weekly electronic transaction-level data for all individuals in Norway over 13 years, our study sheds light on the...

This study analyzes changes in household food consumption patterns and socio-economic demographic characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bali Province. This study uses secondary data collected by Statistics Indonesia, namely the National Socio-economic Survey (Susenas) data with the...

Fearing the COVID-19 infection, people began to avoid eating out and eating at home. Simultaneously, they began using meal delivery services. Numerous studies have assessed the impact of COVID-19 on various economic activities. However, its effects on food consumption patterns have not yet been...

This paper presents the results of the second work package of the project "Limits of Consumption: Sustainable Consumption Considering Planetary Boundaries" conducted on behalf of the German Environment Agency. The focus of the work package was the quantification of consumption boundaries for...

Social protection programs aim to secure individuals' incomes from socioeconomic shocks and provide access to social services for developing human capital and alleviating poverty. In Indonesia, the Family Hope Program (PKH - Program Keluarga Harapan) is a social protection program that focuses...

This paper estimates the elasticity of intertemporal substitution for the euro area. It leverages the unique design of the Consumer Expectations Survey in Europe to directly infer it from the Euler equation. Our final estimates range between 0.7 and 0.8 for the euro area as a whole, which are...