IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v40y2008i7p931-948.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Further evidence of excess sensitivity of consumption? Nonseparability among goods and heterogeneity across households

Author

Listed:
  • Jaoaqin Alegre
  • Llorenc Pou

Abstract

The standard theoretical framework for analysing households' intertemporal decisions is the life-cycle/permanent income model. Among its implications, testing the model allows to analyse the response of consumption to fiscal policy. However, the empirical literature with microdata has yielded mixed results. This article examines the sensitivity of the results to the assumption of separability among goods and of homogeneity across households. For that purpose, we test a rational expectations permanent income model with household data drawn from the Spanish Family Expenditure Survey. This survey contains detailed information on total expenditure and the income presents large, exogenous quarterly changes due to an institutional feature. The article shows that assuming separability among commodities biases the test against the model. When separability is not imposed, we show that the rejection of the model depends on heterogeneity across households in terms of their members being unemployed or not. For those households permanently employed, the model cannot be rejected whatever their income status.

Suggested Citation

  • Jaoaqin Alegre & Llorenc Pou, 2008. "Further evidence of excess sensitivity of consumption? Nonseparability among goods and heterogeneity across households," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(7), pages 931-948.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:40:y:2008:i:7:p:931-948
    DOI: 10.1080/00036840600749896
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840600749896
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036840600749896?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. Hall, Robert E, 1978. "Stochastic Implications of the Life Cycle-Permanent Income Hypothesis: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(6), pages 971-987, December.
    2. Zeldes, Stephen P, 1989. "Consumption and Liquidity Constraints: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(2), pages 305-346, April.
    3. Martin Browning & M. Dolores Collado, 2001. "The Response of Expenditures to Anticipated Income Changes: Panel Data Estimates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 681-692, June.
    4. Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley, 2001. "The Life-Cycle Model of Consumption and Saving," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 3-22, Summer.
    5. Shea, John, 1994. "Should we test the life cycle--permanent income hypothesis with food consumption data?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 63-68, May.
    6. Attanasio, Orazio P & Weber, Guglielmo, 1995. "Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1121-1157, December.
    7. Stephen P. Zeldes, 1989. "Optimal Consumption with Stochastic Income: Deviations from Certainty Equivalence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(2), pages 275-298.
    8. Melvin Stephens Jr., 2003. ""3rd of tha Month": Do Social Security Recipients Smooth Consumption Between Checks?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 406-422, March.
    9. Joseph G. Altonji & Aloysius Siow, 1987. "Testing the Response of Consumption to Income Changes with (Noisy) Panel Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 102(2), pages 293-328.
    10. Martin Browning & Thomas Crossley, "undated". "Shocks, stocks and socks: consumption smoothing and the replacement of durables during an unemployment spell," Canadian International Labour Network Working Papers 27, McMaster University.
    11. F. Alejandro Villagomez, 1997. "Private saving, interest rates and liquidity constraints in LDCs: recent evidence," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(5), pages 607-615.
    12. James J. Heckman, 2001. "Micro Data, Heterogeneity, and the Evaluation of Public Policy: Nobel Lecture," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(4), pages 673-748, August.
    13. Ziliak, James P., 1998. "Does the choice of consumption measure matter? An application to the permanent-income hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 201-216, February.
    14. 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.
    15. Runkle, David E., 1991. "Liquidity constraints and the permanent-income hypothesis : Evidence from panel data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 73-98, February.
    16. Lage, Maureen J., 1991. "Sensitivity of tests of the PIH to alternative consumption proxies," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 429-433, August.
    17. Wilcox, David W, 1989. "Social Security Benefits, Consumption Expenditure, and the Life Cycle Hypothesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(2), pages 288-304, April.
    18. Tullio Jappelli & Jörn-Steffen Pischke & Nicholas S. Souleles, 1998. "Testing For Liquidity Constraints In Euler Equations With Complementary Data Sources," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(2), pages 251-262, May.
    19. repec:fth:pennfi:69 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Flavin, Marjorie A, 1981. "The Adjustment of Consumption to Changing Expectations about Future Income," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 974-1009, October.
    21. 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.
    22. Watanabe, Katsunori & Watanabe, Takayuki & Watanabe, Tsutomu, 2001. "Tax policy and consumer spending: evidence from Japanese fiscal experiments," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 261-281, April.
    23. Tullio Jappelli, 1990. "Who is Credit Constrained in the U. S. Economy?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(1), pages 219-234.
    24. Paxson, Christina H, 1993. "Consumption and Income Seasonality in Thailand," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 39-72, February.
    25. Lusardi, Annamaria, 1996. "Permanent Income, Current Income, and Consumption: Evidence from Two Panel Data Sets," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 14(1), pages 81-90, January.
    26. Hansen, Lars Peter & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1982. "Generalized Instrumental Variables Estimation of Nonlinear Rational Expectations Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1269-1286, September.
    27. Agustin Garcia Garcia, 1999. "Consumption of Spanish households: evidence from cohort data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(7), pages 841-855.
    28. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Jonathan A. Parker, 2002. "Consumption Over the Life Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 47-89, January.
    29. Jonathan A. Parker, 1999. "The Reaction of Household Consumption to Predictable Changes in Social Security Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 959-973, September.
    30. Hall, Robert E & Mishkin, Frederic S, 1982. "The Sensitivity of Consumption to Transitory Income: Estimates from Panel Data on Households," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(2), pages 461-481, March.
    31. Souleles, Nicholas S., 2002. "Consumer response to the Reagan tax cuts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 99-120, July.
    32. Chang-Tai Hsieh, 2003. "Do Consumers React to Anticipated Income Changes? Evidence from the Alaska Permanent Fund," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 397-405, March.
    33. Fissel, Gary S & Jappelli, Tullio, 1990. "Do Liquidity Constraints Vary over Time? Evidence from Survey and Panel Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 22(2), pages 253-262, May.
    34. Hoe-Kyung Lee & Moon-Kee Kong, 2000. "Consumption of durable goods and tests of the permanent income hypothesis: evidence from Korean macro data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 39-44.
    35. Deaton, Angus, 1992. "Understanding Consumption," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288244, Decembrie.
    36. Levenson, Alec R., 1996. "Do consumers respond to future income shocks? Evidence from social security reform in Taiwan," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 275-295, November.
    37. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    38. Hayashi, Fumio, 1982. "The Permanent Income Hypothesis: Estimation and Testing by Instrumental Variables," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(5), pages 895-916, October.
    39. Mariger, Randall P & Shaw, Kathryn, 1993. "Unanticipated Aggregate Disturbances and Tests of the Life-Cycle Consumption Model Using Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(1), pages 48-56, February.
    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. Luis A. Gil-Alana & Antonio Moreno & Seonghoon Cho, 2012. "The Deaton paradox in a long memory context with structural breaks," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(25), pages 3309-3322, September.
    2. Norbert Michel & Nazneen Ahmad, 2012. "Consumer response to child tax credit," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 1199-1214, December.

    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. Tomas Havranek & Anna Sokolova, 2016. "Do Consumers Really Follow a Rule of Thumb? Three Thousand Estimates from 130 Studies Say "Probably Not"," Working Papers 2016/08, Czech National Bank.
    2. Jonathan A. Parker, 1999. "The Reaction of Household Consumption to Predictable Changes in Social Security Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 959-973, September.
    3. repec:pri:wwseco:dp231 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Nicholas S. Souleles & Jonathan A. Parker & David S. Johnson, 2006. "Household Expenditure and the Income Tax Rebates of 2001," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1589-1610, December.
    5. Li, Geng, 2009. "Transaction costs and consumption," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 1263-1277, June.
    6. Orazio P. Attanasio, 1998. "Consumption Demand," NBER Working Papers 6466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. George-Marios Angeletos, 2001. "The Hyberbolic Consumption Model: Calibration, Simulation, and Empirical Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 47-68, Summer.
    8. Souleles, Nicholas S., 2002. "Consumer response to the Reagan tax cuts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 99-120, July.
    9. Attanasio, Orazio P., 1995. "The intertemporal allocation of consumption: theory and evidence," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 39-56, June.
    10. Ni, Shawn & Seol, Youn, 2014. "New evidence on excess sensitivity of household consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 80-94.
    11. Filer, Larry & Fisher, Jonathan D., 2007. "Do liquidity constraints generate excess sensitivity in consumption? New evidence from a sample of post-bankruptcy households," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 790-805, December.
    12. Ziliak, James P., 1998. "Does the choice of consumption measure matter? An application to the permanent-income hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 201-216, February.
    13. Kelley, Clare & Lanot, Gauthier, 2002. "Consumption Patterns Over Pay Periods," Economic Research Papers 269469, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    14. Melvin Stephens Jr., 2003. ""3rd of tha Month": Do Social Security Recipients Smooth Consumption Between Checks?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 406-422, March.
    15. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 693-751, September.
    16. Baugh, Brian & Ben-David, Itzhak & Park, Hoonsuk, 2013. "Disentangling Financial Constraints, Precautionary Savings, and Myopia: Household Behavior Surrounding Federal Tax Returns," Working Paper Series 2013-20, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    17. DeJuan, Joseph P. & Seater, John J., 2007. "Testing the cross-section implications of Friedman's permanent income hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 820-849, April.
    18. Brunila, Anne, 1997. "Current income and private consumption : Saving decisions : Testing the finite horizon model," Research Discussion Papers 6/1997, Bank of Finland.
    19. repec:zbw:bofrdp:1997_006 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Melvin Stephens & Takashi Unayama, 2011. "The Consumption Response to Seasonal Income: Evidence from Japanese Public Pension Benefits," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 86-118, October.
    21. Brunila, Anne, 1997. "Current income and private consumption: Saving decisions: Testing the finite horizon model," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 6/1997, Bank of Finland.
    22. Reis, Ricardo, 2006. "Inattentive consumers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 1761-1800, November.

    More about this item

    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:taf:applec:v:40:y:2008:i:7:p:931-948. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.