IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/spmain/hal-03947994.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Consumption Respond to Transitory Shocks? Reconciling Natural Experiments and Semistructural Methods

Author

Listed:
  • Jeanne Commault

    (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Studies based on natural experiments find that consumption responds strongly and significantly to a transitory variation in income, while semistructural estimations find no pass-through of transitory shocks to consumption. I develop a more robust semistructural estimator that relaxes the assumption that log consumption is a random walk. The robust pass-through estimate is significant and large, implying a yearly marginal propensity to consume of 0.32, close to the natural experiment findings. The robust estimator performs well in numerical simulations of a life cycle model, while nonrobust estimators do not. The difference between the two in the simulations is similar to their difference in the survey data.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeanne Commault, 2022. "Does Consumption Respond to Transitory Shocks? Reconciling Natural Experiments and Semistructural Methods," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03947994, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03947994
    DOI: 10.1257/mac.20190296
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sumit Agarwal & Chunlin Liu & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2007. "The Reaction of Consumer Spending and Debt to Tax Rebates-Evidence from Consumer Credit Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 986-1019, December.
    2. Sumit Agarwal & Wenlan Qian, 2014. "Consumption and Debt Response to Unanticipated Income Shocks: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Singapore," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(12), pages 4205-4230, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Giovanni L. Violante & Greg Kaplan, 2022. "The Marginal Propensity to Consume in Heterogeneous Agent Models," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 747-775, August.
    2. Richard Blundell & Margherita Borella & Jeanne Commault & Mariacristina De Nardi, 2024. "Old Age Risks, Consumption, and Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(2), pages 575-613, February.
    3. Crawley, Edmund & Theloudis, Alexandros, 2024. "Income Shocks and their Transmission into Consumption," Discussion Paper 2024-012, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    4. Roberto Tamborini, 2023. "Inflation surprises in a New Keynesian economy with a true consumption function. The Eurozone as an inflation target zone," DEM Working Papers 2023/1, Department of Economics and Management.
    5. Koşar, Gizem & Melcangi, Davide & Pilossoph, Laura & Wiczer, David, 2023. "Stimulus through Insurance: The Marginal Propensity to Repay Debt," IZA Discussion Papers 16211, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Yunho Cho & James Morley & Aarti Singh, 2024. "Did marginal propensities to consume change with the housing boom and bust?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(1), pages 174-199, January.
    7. Ghosh, Anisha & Theloudis, Alexandros, 2023. "Consumption Partial Insurance in the Presence of Tail Income Risk," Other publications TiSEM c8da0a17-57cb-40bf-ab61-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Roberto Tamborini, 2024. "Inflation surprises in a New Keynesian economy with a “true” consumption function," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(3), pages 1192-1215, July.
    9. Stéphane Dupraz, 2023. "The Dynamic IS Curve when there is both Investment and Savings," Working papers 905, Banque de France.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lukas, Moritz & Nöth, Markus, 2022. "Voluntary minimum repayments and borrower heterogeneity: Evidence from revolving consumer credit," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    2. Anna Sokolova, 2023. "Marginal Propensity to Consume and Unemployment: a Meta-analysis," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 813-846, December.
    3. Jonathan A. Parker & Jake Schild & Laura Erhard & David S. Johnson, 2021. "Household Spending Responses to the Economic Impact Payments of 2020: Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey," Economic Working Papers 544, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    4. Hyungsuk Byun & Barry Scholnick, 2017. "Spatial Commitment Devices and Addictive Goods: Evidence from the Removal of Slot Machines from Bars," Working Papers 17-34, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    5. Katya Kartashova & Xiaoqing Zhou, 2020. "How Do Mortgage Rate Resets Affect Consumer Spending and Debt Repayment? Evidence from Canadian Consumers," Staff Working Papers 20-18, Bank of Canada.
    6. Agarwal, Sumit & Ströbel, Johannes & Chomsisengphet, Souphala & Mahoney, Neale, 2015. "Do Banks Pass Through Credit Expansions? The Marginal Profitability of Consumer Lending During the Great Recession," CEPR Discussion Papers 10839, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. d’Astous, Philippe, 2019. "Responses to an anticipated increase in cash on hand: Evidence from term loan repayments," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    8. Agarwal, Sumit & Koo, Kang Mo & Qian, Wenlan, 2022. "Consumption response to temporary price shock: Evidence from Singapore's annual sale event," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    9. David Bounie & Youssouf Camara & John Galbraith, 2020. "Consumers’ Mobility, Expenditure and Online-Offline Substitution Response to COVID-19: Evidence from French Transaction Data," Cahiers de recherche 14-2020, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    10. Jean‐Noël Barrot & Erik Loualiche & Matthew Plosser & Julien Sauvagnat, 2022. "Import Competition and Household Debt," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(6), pages 3037-3091, December.
    11. Sumit Agarwal & Jessica Pan & Wenlan Qian, 2020. "Age of Decision: Pension Savings Withdrawal and Consumption and Debt Response," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 43-69, January.
    12. Cookson, J. Anthony & Gilje, Erik P. & Heimer, Rawley Z., 2022. "Shale shocked: Cash windfalls and household debt repayment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 905-931.
    13. J. Anthony Cookson & Erik P. Gilje & Rawley Z. Heimer, 2020. "Shale Shocked: Cash Windfalls and Household Debt Repayment," NBER Working Papers 27782, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Lukas, Moritz & Nöth, Markus, 2016. "Commitment and Borrower Heterogeneity: Evidence from Revolving Consumer Credit," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145870, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Martin Flodén & Matilda Kilström & Jósef Sigurdsson & Roine Vestman, 2021. "Household Debt and Monetary Policy: Revealing the Cash-Flow Channel," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(636), pages 1742-1771.
    16. Benjamin J. Keys & Tomasz Piskorski & Amit Seru & Vincent Yao, 2014. "Mortgage Rates, Household Balance Sheets, and the Real Economy," NBER Working Papers 20561, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Qiao Liu & Qiaowei Shen & Zhenghua Li & Shu Chen, 2021. "Stimulating Consumption at Low Budget: Evidence from a Large-Scale Policy Experiment Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(12), pages 7291-7307, December.
    18. Sumit Agarwal & Souphala Chomsisengphet & Neale Mahoney & Johannes Stroebel, 2018. "Do Banks Pass through Credit Expansions to Consumers Who want to Borrow?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(1), pages 129-190.
    19. Fuchs-Schündeln, N. & Hassan, T.A., 2016. "Natural Experiments in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 923-1012, Elsevier.
    20. Vyacheslav Mikhed & Barry Scholnick, 2016. "The Causes of Household Bankruptcy: The Interaction of Income Shocks and Balance Sheets," Working Papers 16-19, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D15 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Intertemporal Household Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03947994. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.