IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jpolec/doi10.1086-682729.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Double Power Law in Consumption and Implications for Testing Euler Equations

Author

Listed:
  • Alexis Akira Toda
  • Kieran Walsh

Abstract

We provide evidence suggesting that the cross-sectional distributions of US consumption and its growth rate obey the power law in both the upper and lower tails, with exponents approximately equal to four. Consequently, high-order moments are unlikely to exist, and the generalized method of moments estimation of Euler equations that employs cross-sectional moments may be inconsistent. Through bootstrap studies, we find that the power law appears to generate spurious nonrejection of heterogeneous-agent asset pricing models in explaining the equity premium. Dividing households into age groups, we propose an estimation approach that appears less susceptible to fat tail issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexis Akira Toda & Kieran Walsh, 2015. "The Double Power Law in Consumption and Implications for Testing Euler Equations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(5), pages 1177-1200.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/682729
    DOI: 10.1086/682729
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/682729
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/682729
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/682729?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 look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Constantinides, George M & Duffie, Darrell, 1996. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(2), pages 219-240, April.
    2. Cogley, Timothy, 2002. "Idiosyncratic risk and the equity premium: evidence from the consumer expenditure survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 309-334, March.
    3. Merton, Robert C., 1971. "Optimum consumption and portfolio rules in a continuous-time model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 373-413, December.
    4. Xavier Gabaix, 2009. "Power Laws in Economics and Finance," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 255-294, May.
    5. Giesen, Kristian & Zimmermann, Arndt & Suedekum, Jens, 2010. "The size distribution across all cities - Double Pareto lognormal strikes," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 129-137, September.
    6. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2002. "Limited Asset Market Participation and the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 825-853, August.
    7. Erich Battistin & Richard Blundell & Arthur Lewbel, 2009. "Why Is Consumption More Log Normal than Income? Gibrat's Law Revisited," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(6), pages 1140-1154, December.
    8. Deaton, Angus & Paxson, Christina, 1994. "Intertemporal Choice and Inequality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(3), pages 437-467, June.
    9. Narayana Kocherlakota & Luigi Pistaferri, 2009. "Asset Pricing Implications of Pareto Optimality with Private Information," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(3), pages 555-590, June.
    10. Alon Brav & George M. Constantinides & Christopher C. Geczy, 2002. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers and Limited Participation: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 793-824, August.
    11. Kocherlakota, Narayana R., 1997. "Testing The Consumption Capm With Heavy-Tailed Pricing Errors," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(3), pages 551-567, September.
    12. Hansen, Lars Peter & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1983. "Stochastic Consumption, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Asset Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(2), pages 249-265, April.
    13. Reed, William J., 2001. "The Pareto, Zipf and other power laws," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 15-19, December.
    14. Igor Fedotenkov, 2013. "A bootstrap method to test for the existence of finite moments," Journal of Nonparametric Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(2), pages 315-322, June.
    15. Ludvigson, Sydney C., 2013. "Advances in Consumption-Based Asset Pricing: Empirical Tests," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 799-906, Elsevier.
    16. Balduzzi, Pierluigi & Yao, Tong, 2007. "Testing heterogeneous-agent models: an alternative aggregation approach," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 369-412, March.
    17. Carlo V. Fiorio & Vassilis A. Hajivassiliou & Peter C. B. Phillips, 2010. "Bimodal t-ratios: the impact of thick tails on inference," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 13(2), pages 271-289, July.
    18. Toda, Alexis Akira, 2012. "The double power law in income distribution: Explanations and evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 364-381.
    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. Alexis Akira Toda & Kieran James Walsh, 2017. "Fat tails and spurious estimation of consumption‐based asset pricing models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(6), pages 1156-1177, September.
    2. Toda, Alexis Akira, 2014. "Incomplete market dynamics and cross-sectional distributions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 310-348.
    3. Toda, Alexis Akira, 2017. "A Note On The Size Distribution Of Consumption: More Double Pareto Than Lognormal," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(6), pages 1508-1518, September.
    4. Ludvigson, Sydney C., 2013. "Advances in Consumption-Based Asset Pricing: Empirical Tests," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 799-906, Elsevier.
    5. Parantap Basu & Andrei Semenovz & Kenji Wadax, 2007. "Uninsurable Risk and Financial Market Puzzles," CDMA Conference Paper Series 0701, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis.
    6. Alexis Akira Toda & Kieran James Walsh & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2020. "The Equity Premium and the One Percent," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(8), pages 3583-3623.
    7. Basu, Parantap & Semenov, Andrei & Wada, Kenji, 2011. "Uninsurable risk and financial market puzzles," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1055-1089, October.
    8. Andrei Semenov, 2003. "High-Order Consumption Moments and Asset Pricing," Working Papers 2003_4, York University, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2005.
    9. Dirk Krueger & Hanno Lustig & Fabrizio Perri, 2008. "Evaluating Asset Pricing Models with Limited Commitment Using Household Consumption Data," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 715-726, 04-05.
    10. Kevin X.D. Huang & Zheng Liu & John Qi Zhu, 2015. "Temptation and Self‐Control: Some Evidence and Applications," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(4), pages 581-615, June.
    11. Reyno Seymore & Margaret Mabugu & Jan van Heerden, 2010. "Border Tax Adjustments to Negate the Economic Impact of an Electricity Generation Tax," Working Papers 201003, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    12. Jacobs, Kris & Pallage, Stéphane & Robe, Michel A., 2013. "Market incompleteness and the equity premium puzzle: Evidence from state-level data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 378-388.
    13. YiLi Chien & Hanno Lustig, 2010. "The Market Price of Aggregate Risk and the Wealth Distribution," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1596-1650, April.
    14. Kazufumi Yamana, 2016. "Structural Household Finance," Discussion papers ron279, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan.
    15. Andrei Semenov, 2008. "Estimation of the consumption CAPM with imperfect sample separation information," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(4), pages 333-348.
    16. Behzod B. Ahundjanov & Sherzod B. Akhundjanov & Botir B. Okhunjanov, 2022. "Power law in COVID‐19 cases in China," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(2), pages 699-719, April.
    17. Wilson, Matthew S., 2020. "Disaggregation and the equity premium puzzle," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-18.
    18. Galicia-Sanguino, Lucía & Rojo-Suárez, Javier & Alonso-Conde, Ana B. & López-Pérez, M. Victoria, 2021. "Trade integration and research and development investment as a proxy for idiosyncratic risk in the cross-section of stock returns," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    19. Stavros Panageas, 2020. "The Implications of Heterogeneity and Inequality for Asset Pricing," NBER Working Papers 26974, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Kris Jacobs, 2001. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-12, CIRANO.

    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:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/682729. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE .

    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.