Durable Goods, Borrowing Constraints and Consumption Insurance
In this paper we study the transmission of income shocks into nondurable consumption in the presence of durable goods. We use a standard a life-cycle model with two goods to characterize the interaction of durability of goods, durability of shocks, and borrowing constraints as determinants of shock transmission. We show that borrowing constraints lead to a substitution between durable and non-durable goods upon arrival of an unexpected income change. This substitution biases the conventional measures of insurance based on the response of non-durable consumption to income changes. The sign of this bias depends critically on the persistence of the shock. We show that households have less insurance against transitory shocks and more insurance against permanent shocks than commonly measured. We calibrate the model economy to the US in order to measure the size of this bias.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
| Length: | |
| Date of creation: | Jul 2012 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Handle: | RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9035 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 77 Bastwick Street, London EC1V 3PZ. Phone: 44 - 20 - 7183 8801 Fax: 44 - 20 - 7183 8820
|
| Order Information: | Email: |
References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2009.
"Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States, 1967-2006,"
NBER Working Papers
15483, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States: 1967-2006," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 15-51, January.
- Heathcote, Jonathan & Perri, Fabrizio & Violante, Giovanni L, 2009. "Unequal We Stand: An Empirical Analysis of Economic Inequality in the United States, 1967-2006," CEPR Discussion Papers 7538, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
- Jonathan Heathcote & Fabrizio Perri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2009. "Unequal we stand: an empirical analysis of economic inequality in the United States, 1967-2006," Staff Report 436, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
- Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley, 2004.
"Shocks, stocks and socks: smoothing consumption over a temporary income loss,"
CAM Working Papers
2004-05, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Applied Microeconometrics.
- Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley, 2009. "Shocks, Stocks, and Socks: Smoothing Consumption Over a Temporary Income Loss," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(6), pages 1169-1192, December.
- Greg Kaplan, 2010.
"Moving back home: insurance against labor market risk,"
Working Papers
677, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
- Greg Kaplan, 2012. "Moving Back Home: Insurance against Labor Market Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(3), pages 446 - 512.
- Greg Kaplan, 2010. "Moving back home: insurance against labor market risk," Staff Report 449, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9035. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ()
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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.