IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecinqu/v36y1998i4p575-89.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumption Spending and the Paper-Bill Spread: Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Weber, Christian E

Abstract

This paper explains recent findings that the paper-bill spread helps forecast consumption spending using an intertemporal optimizing model of consumption and portfolio allocation. The spread is simply the opportunity cost in terms of foregone future consumption of holding government debt rather than higher yielding private debt. Thus, if government debt appears along with consumption in the single period utility function, the spread appears in one of the Euler equations for consumption and asset accumulation. Empirical tests strongly support the model. Finally, including the spread in a rule of thumb model of consumption reduces the importance of nonoptimizing behavior. Copyright 1998 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Weber, Christian E, 1998. "Consumption Spending and the Paper-Bill Spread: Theory and Evidence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(4), pages 575-589, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecinqu:v:36:y:1998:i:4:p:575-89
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Athanasopoulos, George & de Carvalho Guillén, Osmani Teixeira & Issler, João Victor & Vahid, Farshid, 2011. "Model selection, estimation and forecasting in VAR models with short-run and long-run restrictions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 164(1), pages 116-129, September.
    2. Weber, Christian E., 2002. "Intertemporal non-separability and "rule of thumb" consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 293-308, March.
    3. Ayelen Banegas, 2016. "Predictability of Growth in Emerging Markets: Information in Financial Aggregates," International Finance Discussion Papers 1174, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Gomes, Fábio Augusto Reis & Issler, João Victor, 2017. "Testing Consumption Optimality Using Aggregate Data," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(5), pages 1119-1140, July.
    5. 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.
    6. Ewing, Bradley T. & Lynch, Gerald J. & Payne, James E., 2003. "The paper-bill spread and real output: what matters more, a change in the paper rate or a change in the bill rate?," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 233-246.
    7. Gomes, Fábio Augusto Reis & Issler, João Victor, 2009. "Testing the optimality of aggregate consumption decisions: is there rule-of-thumb behavior?," FGV EPGE Economics Working Papers (Ensaios Economicos da EPGE) 682, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil).
    8. Malik, Farooq & Ewing, Bradley T. & Kruse, Jamie B. & Lynch, Gerald J., 2009. "Modeling the time-varying volatility of the paper-bill spread," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 61(5), pages 404-414, September.

    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:oup:ecinqu:v:36:y:1998:i:4:p:575-89. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.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.