IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1991.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Consumer Spending and the After-Tax Real Interest Rate

Author

Listed:
  • N. Gregory Mankiw

Abstract

This paper examines the interaction between consumer durable goods and consumer non-durable goods in determining the responsiveness of total expenditure to the after-tax real interest rate. The introduction of consumer durables into the consumer's decision problem can have important effects on the interest elasticity of total spending. The channel highlighted here might be called the "user cost effect," in that the after-tax interest rate enters the implicit user cost of consumer durable goods. Even if a consumer has a one-period planning horizon, possibly because of a binding borrowing constraint, the user cost effect may nonetheless make his spending highly interest sensitive. Finally, the paper examines the response of the level and composition of consumer spending to the high real interest rates experienced in the early 1980s.

Suggested Citation

  • N. Gregory Mankiw, 1986. "Consumer Spending and the After-Tax Real Interest Rate," NBER Working Papers 1991, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1991
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1991.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    3. Summers, Lawrence H, 1981. "Capital Taxation and Accumulation in a Life Cycle Growth Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(4), pages 533-544, September.
    4. Robert E. Hall, 1985. "Real Interest and Consumption," NBER Working Papers 1694, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Firouz Gahvari, 1985. "Taxation of Housing, Capital Accumulation, and Welfare: a Study in Dynamic Tax Reform," Public Finance Review, , vol. 13(2), pages 132-160, April.
    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. Lukáš Kučera, 2017. "Real Interest Rate Channel from the Point of View of Chosen Theories of Investment [Kanál reálné úrokové míry z pohledu vybraných teorií investic]," Acta Oeconomica Pragensia, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2017(2), pages 70-84.
    2. Martin S. Feldstein, 1999. "Capital Income Taxes and the Benefit of Price Stability," NBER Chapters, in: The Costs and Benefits of Price Stability, pages 9-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Erik Canton & Ed Westerhout, 1999. "A model for the Dutch pharmaceutical market," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(5), pages 391-402, August.
    4. Fuad Hasanov, 2005. "Housing, Household Portfolio, and Intertemporal Elasticity of Substitution: Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey," Macroeconomics 0510011, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Pindyck, Robert S., 1993. "Investments of uncertain cost," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 53-76, August.
    6. Douglas W. Elmendorf, "undated". "The Effect of Interest-Rate Changes on Household Saving and Consumption: A Survey," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1996-27, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 10 Dec 2019.
    7. Feldstein, Martin, 1995. "Fiscal policies, capital formation, and capitalism," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(3-4), pages 399-420, April.
    8. Douglas Dacy & Fuad Hasanov, 2005. "The Rate of Interest or the Rate of Return: Estimating Intertemporal Elasticity of Substitution," Macroeconomics 0510012, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Christian C. Starck, 1991. "The interest rate elasticity of aggregate consumption : a time varying parameter approach," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 142-153, Autumn.
    10. Starck, Christian, 1990. "The Interest rate elasticity of aggregate consumption: a time varying parameter approach," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 28/1990, Bank of Finland.
    11. Auray, Stéphane, 2009. "Consommation, effet de substitution intertemporelle et formation des habitudes," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 85(4), pages 437-473, décembre.

    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. Abel, Andrew B., 1990. "Consumption and investment," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: B. M. Friedman & F. H. Hahn (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 14, pages 725-778, Elsevier.
    2. Cavalcanti, Carlos B., 1993. "Intertemporal Substitution in Consumption: An American Investigation for Brazil," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 13(2), November.
    3. Orazio P. Attanasio, 1998. "Consumption Demand," NBER Working Papers 6466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Hubbard, R. Glenn & Skinner, Jonathan & Zeldes, Stephen P., 1994. "The importance of precautionary motives in explaining individual and aggregate saving," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 59-125, June.
    5. 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.
    6. Lawrence H. Summers, 1982. "Tax Policy, the Rate of Return, and Savings," NBER Working Papers 0995, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Gregory Mankiw, N., 1999. "Government debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1615-1669, Elsevier.
    8. Kris Jacobs, 2001. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-12, CIRANO.
    9. 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.
    10. Jacobs, Kris, 2000. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1472, Econometric Society.
    11. Orazio P. Attanasio & Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg & Ekaterini Kyriazidou, 2008. "Credit Constraints In The Market For Consumer Durables: Evidence From Micro Data On Car Loans," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(2), pages 401-436, May.
    12. Scott, Andrew, 2000. "Optimal consumption when capital markets are imperfect," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 65-70, January.
    13. Levin, Laurence, 1998. "Are assets fungible?: Testing the behavioral theory of life-cycle savings," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 59-83, July.
    14. Crump, Richard K. & Eusepi, Stefano & Tambalotti, Andrea & Topa, Giorgio, 2022. "Subjective intertemporal substitution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 118-133.
    15. R. Glenn Hubbard, 1984. "'Precautionary' Saving Revisited: Social Security, Individual Welfare, and the Capital Stock," NBER Working Papers 1430, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Erik Hurst, 2004. "Grasshoppers, Ants and Pre-Retirement Wealth: A Test of Permanent Income Consumers," Working Papers wp088, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    17. Koumparoulis, Dimitrios, 2006. "Ευρωπαϊκή Δημοσιονομική Πολιτική Και Οικονομική Μεγέθυνση: Η Νεοκλασική Οικονομική Θεωρία Για Την Περίπτωση Της Ελλάδας [European Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth: The Neoclassical Economic Theory," MPRA Paper 44310, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Hausman, Jerry A & Poterba, James M, 1987. "Household Behavior and the Tax Reform Act of 1986," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 101-119, Summer.
    19. Russo, Benjamin & Gandar, John M., 2003. "Interest-sensitive wealth and the life-cycle hypothesis: implications for fiscal policy," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 418-432.
    20. Alan L. Gustman & F. Thomas Juster, 1995. "Income and Wealth of Older American Households: Modeling Issues for Public Policy Analysis," NBER Working Papers 4996, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:nbr:nberwo:1991. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.