IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/vfsc16/145507.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Buffer-stock savings and households' wealth response to income shocks

Author

Listed:
  • Koeniger, Winfried
  • Fella, Giulio
  • Frache, Serafin

Abstract

We structurally estimate a buffer-stock savings model using panel data from the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth that contains information not only about income and consumption but also wealth. We exploit the information about wealth and the responses of wealth and consumption to income shocks over different time horizons to infer the degree of insurance against permanent and transitory income shocks. The estimated model implies that Italian households can insure 5-10% of a permanent shock and 90-95% of a transitory shock. The degree of insurance against permanent shocks is at the low end of the range of existing estimates for the U.S.

Suggested Citation

  • Koeniger, Winfried & Fella, Giulio & Frache, Serafin, 2016. "Buffer-stock savings and households' wealth response to income shocks," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145507, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145507
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/145507/1/VfS_2016_pid_6305.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carroll, Christopher D., 2009. "Precautionary saving and the marginal propensity to consume out of permanent income," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 780-790, September.
    2. Thomas Hintermaier & Winfried Koeniger, 2011. "On the Evolution of the US Consumer Wealth Distribution," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 317-338, April.
    3. John Campbell & Angus Deaton, 1989. "Why is Consumption So Smooth?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(3), pages 357-373.
    4. Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri, 2010. "Does Consumption Inequality Track Income Inequality in Italy?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 133-153, January.
    5. Orazio P. Attanasio & Nicola Pavoni, 2011. "Risk Sharing in Private Information Models With Asset Accumulation: Explaining the Excess Smoothness of Consumption," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(4), pages 1027-1068, July.
    6. Joseph G. Altonji & Aloysius Siow, 1987. "Testing the Response of Consumption to Income Changes with (Noisy) Panel Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 293-328.
    7. Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States: 1967-2006," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 15-51, January.
    8. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "How Much Consumption Insurance beyond Self-Insurance?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 53-87, October.
    9. Fatih Guvenen & Anthony A. Smith, 2014. "Inferring Labor Income Risk and Partial Insurance From Economic Choices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 2085-2129, November.
    10. Deaton, Angus, 1992. "Understanding Consumption," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288244.
    11. Cochrane, John H, 1991. "A Simple Test of Consumption Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(5), pages 957-976, October.
    12. Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri, 2011. "Financial Integration and Consumption Smoothing," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(553), pages 678-706, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Giulio Fella & Serafin Frache & Winfried Koeniger, 2020. "Buffer‐Stock Saving And Households' Response To Income Shocks," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1359-1382, August.
    2. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "How Much Consumption Insurance beyond Self-Insurance?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 53-87, October.
    3. Dirk Krueger & Egor Malkov & Fabrizio Perri, 2023. "How Do Households Respond to Income Shocks?," Staff Report 655, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    4. Estelle Dauchy & Francisco Navarro-Sanchez & Nathan Seegert, 2021. "Taxation and Inequality: Active and Passive Channels," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 42, pages 156-177, October.
    5. Attanasio, Orazio & Kovacs, Agnes & Molnar, Krisztina, 2017. "Euler Equations, Subjective Expectations and Income Shocks," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 5/2017, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    6. Orazio Attanasio & Krisztina Molnar, 2017. "Euler Equations, Subjective Expectations and Income Shocks," Economics Series Working Papers 820, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    7. Hryshko, Dmytro, 2014. "Correlated income shocks and excess smoothness of consumption," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 41-62.
    8. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, 2016. "The Vulnerable Are Not (Necessarily) the Poor," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Inequality after the 20th Century: Papers from the Sixth ECINEQ Meeting, volume 24, pages 29-57, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    9. José Casado, 2011. "From income to consumption: measuring households partial insurance," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 471-495, April.
    10. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2014. "Consumption and Labor Supply with Partial Insurance: An Analytical Framework," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2075-2126, July.
    11. Tobias Broer, 2013. "The Wrong Shape of Insurance? What Cross-Sectional Distributions Tell Us about Models of Consumption Smoothing," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 107-140, October.
    12. Pierfederico Asdrubali & Simone Tedeschi & Luigi Ventura, 2020. "Household risk‐sharing channels," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(3), pages 1109-1142, July.
    13. Orazio P. Attanasio, 1998. "Consumption Demand," NBER Working Papers 6466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Arpita Chatterjee & James Morley & Aarti Singh, 2021. "Estimating household consumption insurance," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(5), pages 628-635, August.
    15. Terézia Vančová, 2019. "The Excess Smoothness and Sensitivity of Consumption in the V4 Countries," Acta Universitatis Agriculturae et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis, Mendel University Press, vol. 67(6), pages 1653-1663.
    16. Arpita Chatterjee & James Morley & Aarti Singh, 2017. "Full Information Estimation of Household Income Risk and Consumption Insurance," Discussion Papers 2017-07, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    17. Charlotte Ostergaard & Bent E. Serensen & Oved Yosha, 2002. "Consumption and Aggregate Constraints: Evidence from U.S. States and Canadian Provinces," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 634-645, June.
    18. Alejandro Badel & Mark Huggett, 2014. "Interpreting Life Cycle Inequality Patterns as an Efficient Allocation: Mission Impossible?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(4), pages 613-629, October.
    19. Christopher D. Carroll & Edmund Crawley & Jiri Slacalek & Kiichi Tokuoka & Matthew N. White, 2020. "Sticky Expectations and Consumption Dynamics," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 40-76, July.
    20. Hryshko, Dmytro & Manovskii, Iourii, 2022. "How much consumption insurance in the U.S.?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 17-33.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:vfsc16:145507. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfsocea.html .

    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.