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Does stock market wealth matter for consumption?

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Author Info
Karen E. Dynan
Dean M. Maki
Abstract

This paper explores the household behavior that underlies the link between wealth and consumption at the aggregate level. One possibility is that changes in wealth directly cause changes in consumption through their effect on households' contemporaneous budget sets; another possibility is that they merely predict changes in consumption because they signal changes in future income. Based on analysis of household-level data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we find that direct wealth effects begin to show up relatively quickly and continue to boost consumption growth for a number of quarters, in line with aggregate estimates. In contrast, we find that the indirect wealth channel is not an important determinant of consumption growth. We also estimate that an additional dollar of wealth leads households with moderate securities holdings to increase consumption between 5 cents and 15 cents, with the most likely gain in the lower part of this range.

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Paper provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) in its series Finance and Economics Discussion Series with number 2001-23.

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Date of creation: 2001
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2001-23

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Keywords: Stock market Consumption (Economics) Wealth

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  6. Poterba, J.M. & Samwick, A.A., 1996. "Stock Ownership Patterns, Stock Market Fluctuations, and Consumption," Working papers 96-2, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
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  9. 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. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Zeldes, Stephen P, 1989. "Optimal Consumption with Stochastic Income: Deviations from Certainty Equivalence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 104(2), pages 275-98, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. Karen E. Dynan & Jonathan Skinner & Stephen P. Zeldes, 2000. "Do the Rich Save More?," NBER Working Papers 7906, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  18. Zeldes, Stephen P, 1989. "Consumption and Liquidity Constraints: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(2), pages 305-46, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Karen E. Dynan, 2000. "Habit Formation in Consumer Preferences: Evidence from Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 391-406, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. James M. Poterba, 2000. "Stock Market Wealth and Consumption," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 99-118, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  21. Martha Starr-McCluer, 1998. "Stock market wealth and consumer spending," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1998-20, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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  22. F. Thomas Juster & Joseph Lupton & James P. Smith & Frank Stafford, 2004. "Savings and Wealth; Then and Now," Labor and Demography 0403027, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
  23. Sydney Ludvigson & Charles Steindel, 1999. "How important is the stock market effect on consumption?," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Jul, pages 29-51. [Downloadable!]
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  24. Maria W. Otoo, 1999. "Consumer sentiment and the stock market," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-60, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  25. Carol Bertaut & Martha Starr-McCluer, 2000. "Household portfolios in the United States," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2000-26, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  26. Dean M. Maki & Michael G. Palumbo, 2001. "Disentangling the wealth effect: a cohort analysis of household saving in the 1990s," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-21, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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