IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednsr/103885.html

Consumption, Savings, and Earnings Responses to Financial Windfalls

Author

Abstract

We estimate the causal effects of a financial windfall on consumption, savings, and wage earnings using linked administrative data on a large sample of Canadian lottery winners. Using separate linkages of lottery winners to income tax records and credit bureau data, we estimate how lottery winnings affect consumption measured through credit card spending, savings through financial asset accumulation and debt repayment, and wage earnings from tax records. We then examine how these responses vary across the income distribution. We find that high-income individuals allocated a larger share of lottery winnings to savings and leisure, while low-income individuals spent a larger share on consumption. We illustrate the policy relevance of these heterogeneous responses through three applications: designing fiscal stimulus programs, evaluating a Universal Basic Income (UBI), and determining optimal top tax rates on wage earnings and savings.

Suggested Citation

  • Rajashri Chakrabarti & Philippe d'Astous & Kory Kroft & Sheisha Kulkarni & Vyacheslav Mikhed & Matthew J. Notowidigdo & Sahil Raina & Barry Scholnick, 2026. "Consumption, Savings, and Earnings Responses to Financial Windfalls," Staff Reports 1208, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:103885
    DOI: 10.59576/sr.1208
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr1208.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr1208.html
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.59576/sr.1208?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D15 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Intertemporal Household Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply

    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:fip:fednsr:103885. 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: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.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.