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Is consumption insufficiently sensitive to innovations in income?

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  • Lawrence J. Christiano

Abstract

Deaton (1986) has noted that if income is a first-order autoregressive process in first differences, then a simple version of Friedman?s permanent income hypothesis (SPIH) implies that measured U.S. consumption is insufficiently sensitive to innovations in income. This paper argues that this implication of the SPIH is a consequence of the fact that it ignores the role of the substitution effect in the consumption decision. Using a parametric version of the standard model of economic growth, the paper shows that very small movements in interest rates are sufficient to induce an empirically plausible amount of consumption smoothing. Since an overall evaluation of the model?s explanation for the observed smoothness of consumption requires examining its implications for other aspects of the data, the paper also explores some of these.

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  • Lawrence J. Christiano, . "Is consumption insufficiently sensitive to innovations in income?," Staff Report, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:106
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. King, Robert G. & Plosser, Charles I. & Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1991. "Stochastic Trends and Economic Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 819-840, September.
    2. Francesco Busato & Bruno Chiarini & Elisabetta Marzano, 2008. "Consumption and income smoothing," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(17), pages 2191-2207.
    3. Marcelo L. Veracierto, 2002. "Plant-Level Irreversible Investment and Equilibrium Business Cycles," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 181-197, March.
    4. Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin, 1990. "Unit roots in real GNP: Do we know, and do we care?," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 7-61, January.
    5. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum, 1988. "Is Theory Really Ahead of Measurement? Current Real Business Cycle Theories and Aggregate Labor Market Fluctuations," NBER Working Papers 2700, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Lawrence J. Christiano & Michele Boldrin & Jonas D. M. Fisher, 2001. "Habit Persistence, Asset Returns, and the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 149-166, March.
    7. Sorensen, Bent E. & Yosha, Oved, 1998. "International risk sharing and European monetary unification," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 211-238, August.
    8. Kelly, David L & Kolstad, Charles D, 2001. "Solving Infinite Horizon Growth Models with an Environmental Sector," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 18(2), pages 217-231, October.
    9. Parantap Basu, 1994. "Capital risk and consumption puzzles: A pedagogical note," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 99-107, February.
    10. repec:fip:fedmsr:280 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. James C. Morley, 2007. "The Slow Adjustment of Aggregate Consumption to Permanent Income," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(2-3), pages 615-638, March.
    12. James M. Nason, 1991. "The permanent income hypothesis when the bliss point is stochastic," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 46, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    13. Hansen, Gary D., 1997. "Technical progress and aggregate fluctuations," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 1005-1023, June.
    14. Vinod, H. D. & Basu, Parantap, 1995. "Forecasting consumption, income and real interest rates from alternative state space models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 217-231, June.
    15. Marjorie A. Flavin, 1988. "The Excess Smoothness of Consumption: Identification and Interpretation," NBER Working Papers 2807, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Lawrence J. Christiano, 1987. "Intertemporal substitution and smoothness of consumption," Working Papers 427, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    17. Basu, Parantap, 1995. "Tax rate uncertainty and the sensitivity of consumption to income in an overlapping generations model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(1-2), pages 421-439.

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    Keywords

    Consumption (Economics); Income;

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