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Risk-Sensitive Consumption and Savings under Rational Inattention

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  • Yulei Luo
  • Eric R. Young

Abstract

This paper studies the consumption-savings behavior of households who have risk-sensitive preferences and suffer from limited information-processing capacity (rational inattention or RI). We first solve the model explicitly and show that RI increases precautionary savings by interacting with income uncertainty and risk sensitivity. Given the closed-form solutions, we find that the RI model displays a wide range of observational equivalence properties, implying that consumption and savings data cannot distinguish between risk sensitivity, robustness, or the discount factor, in any combination. We then show that the welfare costs from RI are larger for risk-sensitive households than any other observationally-equivalent settings. (JEL D11, D81, D82, E13, E21)

Suggested Citation

  • Yulei Luo & Eric R. Young, 2010. "Risk-Sensitive Consumption and Savings under Rational Inattention," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 281-325, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:2:y:2010:i:4:p:281-325
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mac.2.4.281
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

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