IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecofin/v54y2020ics1062940818304029.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The asymmetric behavior of household consumption under the business cycle

Author

Listed:
  • Lo, Kuang-Ta
  • Chou, Ta-Sheng
  • Tsui, Stephanie

Abstract

In this study, we examine whether and to what extent the pattern of household consumption is asymmetrically sensitive to economic changes. We use a threshold model with error correction to characterize household consumption under the business cycle. Using data from the 1979–2014 Survey of Family Income and Expenditure in Taiwan, we find that household consumption has pro-cyclical characteristics during the business cycle. More importantly, household consumption responds asymmetrically to economic fluctuations such that changes in consumption tend to be larger during expansions than during downturns. Furthermore, the nature of this asymmetry differs across household income quantiles.

Suggested Citation

  • Lo, Kuang-Ta & Chou, Ta-Sheng & Tsui, Stephanie, 2020. "The asymmetric behavior of household consumption under the business cycle," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecofin:v:54:y:2020:i:c:s1062940818304029
    DOI: 10.1016/j.najef.2019.03.017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062940818304029
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.najef.2019.03.017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hsin-Yi Lin & Kuang-Ta Lo, 2012. "Tax Incentives and Charitable Contributions: the Evidence from Censored Quantile Regression," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(4), pages 535-558, October.
    2. Enders, Walter & Siklos, Pierre L, 2001. "Cointegration and Threshold Adjustment," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(2), pages 166-176, April.
    3. Nora Lustig, 2000. "Crises and the Poor: Socially Responsible Macroeconomics," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2000), pages 1-30, August.
    4. Shea, John, 1995. "Myopia, Liquidity Constraints, and Aggregate Consumption: A Simple Test," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(3), pages 798-805, August.
    5. Jappelli, Tullio & Pistaferri, Luigi, 2000. "Using subjective income expectations to test for excess sensitivity of consumption to predicted income growth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 337-358, February.
    6. Patterson, Kerry D, 1993. "The Impact of Credit Constraints, Interest Rates and Housing Equity Withdrawal on the Intertemporal Pattern of Consumption--A Diagrammatic Analysis," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 40(4), pages 391-407, November.
    7. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    8. Cutler, David M & Katz, Lawrence F, 1992. "Rising Inequality? Changes in the Distribution of Income and Consumption in the 1980's," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(2), pages 546-551, May.
    9. Christopher D. Carroll & Jiri Slacalek & Kiichi Tokuoka, 2014. "The Distribution of Wealth and the MPC: Implications of New European Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 107-111, May.
    10. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    11. Nadir Ocal & Denise R. Osborn, 2000. "Business cycle non-linearities in UK consumption and production," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(1), pages 27-43.
    12. Richard Blundell & Ian Preston, 1995. "Income, expenditure and the living standards of UK households," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 16(3), pages 40-54, August.
    13. Alan Carruth & Andrew Dickerson, 2003. "An asymmetric error correction model of UK consumer spending," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(6), pages 619-630.
    14. Apergis, Nicholas & Miller, Stephen M., 2006. "Consumption asymmetry and the stock market: Empirical evidence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(3), pages 337-342, December.
    15. Jonathan Huntley & Valentina Michelangeli, 2014. "Can Tax Rebates Stimulate Consumption Spending in a Life-Cycle Model?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 162-189, January.
    16. Proietti, Tommaso, 2005. "New algorithms for dating the business cycle," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 477-498, April.
    17. Engle, Robert & Granger, Clive, 2015. "Co-integration and error correction: Representation, estimation, and testing," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 39(3), pages 106-135.
    18. Cook, Steven, 2002. "Assymetric Mean Reversion in the Consumption-Income Ratio: Evidence from OECD economies," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 2(2).
    19. Harding, Don & Pagan, Adrian, 2002. "Dissecting the cycle: a methodological investigation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 365-381, March.
    20. Miles, David, 1997. "A Household Level Study of the Determinants of Incomes and Consumption," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(440), pages 1-25, January.
    21. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    22. Enders, Walter & Granger, Clive W J, 1998. "Unit-Root Tests and Asymmetric Adjustment with an Example Using the Term Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 16(3), pages 304-311, July.
    23. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    24. Nicholas S. Souleles, 1999. "The Response of Household Consumption to Income Tax Refunds," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 947-958, September.
    25. Tagkalakis, Athanasios, 2008. "The effects of fiscal policy on consumption in recessions and expansions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1486-1508, June.
    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. Zhang, Jiaping & Zhang, Huirong & Gong, Xiaomei, 2022. "Mobile payment and rural household consumption: Evidence from China," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(3).

    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. Stefano Mainardi, 2018. "Fishing vessel efficiency, skipper skills and hake pricetransmission in a small island economy," Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 99(3-4), pages 215-251.
    2. Kanjilal, Kakali & Ghosh, Sajal, 2017. "Dynamics of crude oil and gold price post 2008 global financial crisis – New evidence from threshold vector error-correction model," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 358-365.
    3. Michele Salvi & Christoph A. Schaltegger, 2023. "Tax more or spend less? Historical evidence from Switzerland’s federal budget plans," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(3), pages 678-705, June.
    4. Titus O. Awokuse & Xiaohong Wang, 2009. "Threshold Effects and Asymmetric Price Adjustments in U.S. Dairy Markets," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 57(2), pages 269-286, June.
    5. Sokbae Lee & Myung Hwan Seo & Youngki Shin, 2017. "Correction," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 112(518), pages 883-883, April.
    6. Crespo-Cuaresma, Jesús & Fernández-Amador, Octavio, 2013. "Business cycle convergence in EMU: A first look at the second moment," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 265-284.
    7. Harald Grech, 2004. "What Do German Short-Term Interest Rates Tell Us About Future Inflation?," Working Papers 94, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    8. Travaglini, Guido, 2007. "The U.S. Dynamic Taylor Rule With Multiple Breaks, 1984-2001," MPRA Paper 3419, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Jun 2007.
    9. Nicholas Apergis & Stephen M. Miller, 2004. "Consumption Asymmetry and the Stock Market: Further Evidence," Working papers 2004-19, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    10. Chevallier, Julien, 2011. "Evaluating the carbon-macroeconomy relationship: Evidence from threshold vector error-correction and Markov-switching VAR models," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 2634-2656.
    11. Petar Sorić & Mirjana Čižmešija & Marina Matošec, 2020. "EU Consumer Confidence and the New Modesty Hypothesis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 899-921, December.
    12. Apergis, Nicholas & Miller, Stephen M., 2006. "Consumption asymmetry and the stock market: Empirical evidence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(3), pages 337-342, December.
    13. Anita Rath & Arpit Sachan, 2022. "Emerging Issues in Fiscal Sustainability in India: A Study of Central Government Finances, 1979–1980 to 2018–2019," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 11(1), pages 39-68, June.
    14. Biolsi, Christopher, 2021. "Labor productivity forecasts based on a Beveridge–Nelson filter: Is there statistical evidence for a slowdown?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    15. Mendonca, Gui Pedro, 2008. "Structural Breaks, Regime Change and Asymmetric Adjustment: A Short and Long Run Global Approach to the Output/Unemployment Dynamics," MPRA Paper 14648, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Vicente Esteve, 2004. "Política fiscal y productividad del trabajo en la economía española: un análisis de series temporales," Revista de Analisis Economico – Economic Analysis Review, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business, vol. 19(1), pages 3-29, June.
    17. Aliyu Alhaji Jibrilla, 2016. "Fiscal sustainability in the presence of structural breaks: Does overconfidence on resource exports hurt government’s ability to finance debt? Evidence from Nigeria," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 1170317-117, December.
    18. Márquez, Elena & Martínez-Cañete, Ana R. & Pérez-Soba, Inés, 2013. "Wealth shocks, credit conditions and asymmetric consumption response: Empirical evidence for the UK," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 357-366.
    19. Gómez-Puig, Marta & Sosvilla-Rivero, Simón, 2015. "The causal relationship between debt and growth in EMU countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 974-989.
    20. Kateryna Goychuk & William H. Meyers, 2014. "Black Sea and World Wheat Market Price Integration Analysis," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 62(2), pages 245-261, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cyclicality; Asymmetry; Business cycle; Household consumption;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General

    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:eee:ecofin:v:54:y:2020:i:c:s1062940818304029. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620163 .

    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.