IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/koc/wpaper/1213.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Durable Purchases over the Later Life Cycle

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Browning

    (University of Oxford and Institute for Fiscal Studies)

  • Thomas Crossley

    (Koc University, Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Cambridge)

  • Melanie Lührmann

    (Royal Holloway, University of London and Institute for Fiscal Studies)

Abstract

We investigate the life cycle patterns of households' spending on medium value durables. We use panel data on expenditures on appliances and consumer electronics the British Household Panel Study between 1997 and 2008. In cross section, expenditures for appliances and consumer electronics decrease strongly as households age. We show that this is entirely attributable to cohort effects and that when such effects are properly modelled, expenditure on consumer electronics rises with age. We also document important demand effects of household composition, labour supply and health status.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Browning & Thomas Crossley & Melanie Lührmann, 2012. "Durable Purchases over the Later Life Cycle," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 1213, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    • Handle: RePEc:koc:wpaper:1213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eaf.ku.edu.tr/sites/eaf.ku.edu.tr/files/erf_wp_1213.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Erich Battistin & Agar Brugiavini & Enrico Rettore & Guglielmo Weber, 2009. "The Retirement Consumption Puzzle: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2209-2226, December.
    2. Banks, James & Blundell, Richard & Tanner, Sarah, 1998. "Is There a Retirement-Savings Puzzle?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 769-788, September.
    3. Lührmann Melanie, 2010. "Consumer Expenditures and Home Production at Retirement – New Evidence from Germany," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 225-245, May.
    4. Maria Chiuri & Tullio Jappelli, 2010. "Do the elderly reduce housing equity? An international comparison," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(2), pages 643-663, March.
    5. Kapteyn, Arie & Alessie, Rob & Lusardi, Annamaria, 2005. "Explaining the wealth holdings of different cohorts: Productivity growth and Social Security," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 1361-1391, July.
    6. Grossman, Sanford J & Laroque, Guy, 1990. "Asset Pricing and Optimal Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Illiquid Durable Consumption Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 25-51, January.
    7. Michael Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2003. "The Retirement-Consumption Puzzle: Anticipated and Actual Declines in Spending at Retirement," NBER Working Papers 9586, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Lundberg, Shelly & Startza, Richard & Stillman, Steven, 2003. "The retirement-consumption puzzle: a marital bargaining approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(5-6), pages 1199-1218, May.
    9. Browning, Martin & Meghir, Costas, 1991. "The Effects of Male and Female Labor Supply on Commodity Demands," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 925-951, July.
    10. Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2006. "Some Answers to The Retirement-Consumption Puzzle," Working Papers WR-342, RAND Corporation.
    11. Martin Browning & Mette Ejrnæs, 2009. "Consumption and Children," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 93-111, February.
    12. Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2006. "Some Answers to the Retirement-Consumption Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 12057, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Deaton, Angus & Paxson, Christina, 1994. "Intertemporal Choice and Inequality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(3), pages 437-467, June.
    14. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2013. "Deconstructing Life Cycle Expenditure," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(3), pages 437-492.
    15. James Banks & Richard Blundell & Zoë Oldfield & James P. Smith, 2010. "Housing Price Volatility and Downsizing in Later Life," NBER Chapters, in: Research Findings in the Economics of Aging, pages 337-379, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Rob Alessie & Joppe Ree, 2009. "Explaining The Hump In Life Cycle Consumption profiles," De Economist, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 107-120, March.
    17. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2005. "Consumption versus Expenditure," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(5), pages 919-948, October.
    18. Michael Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2003. "The Retirement-Consumption Puzzle: Anticipated and Actual Declines in Spending at Retirement," NBER Working Papers 9586, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Lillard, Lee A & Weiss, Yoram, 1997. "Uncertain Health and Survival: Effects on End-of-Life Consumption," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 15(2), pages 254-268, April.
    20. Melanie Lührmann, 2010. "Consumer Expenditures and Home Production at Retirement – New Evidence from Germany," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 11(2), pages 225-245, May.
    21. Amy Finkelstein & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2009. "Approaches to Estimating the Health State Dependence of the Utility Function," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 116-121, May.
    22. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Jonathan A. Parker, 2002. "Consumption Over the Life Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 47-89, January.
    23. Lundberg, Shelly & Startza, Richard & Stillman, Steven, 2003. "The retirement-consumption puzzle: a marital bargaining approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(5-6), pages 1199-1218, May.
    24. James Banks & Sarah Smith, 2006. "Retirement in the UK," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 22(1), pages 40-56, Spring.
    25. Raffaelle Miniaci & Chiara Monfardini & Guglielmo Weber, 2003. "Is there a retirement consumption puzzle in Italy?," IFS Working Papers W03/14, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    26. Ernst R. Berndt & Neal J. Rappaport, 2001. "Price and Quality of Desktop and Mobile Personal Computers: A Quarter-Century Historical Overview," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 268-273, May.
    27. Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2005. "Changes in Consumption and Activities in Retirement," Working Papers wp096, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    28. 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.
    29. Jesus Fernández-Villaverde & Dirk Krueger, 2007. "Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(3), pages 552-565, August.
    30. Bar-Ilan, Avner & Blinder, Alan S, 1992. "Consumer Durables: Evidence on the Optimality of Usually Doing Nothing," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 24(2), pages 258-272, May.
    31. Deaton,Angus & Muellbauer,John, 1980. "Economics and Consumer Behavior," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521296762.
    32. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow, 1998. "Using Consumer Theory to Test Competing Business Cycle Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(2), pages 233-261, April.
    33. Orazio P. Attanasio, 2000. "Consumer Durables and Inertial Behaviour: Estimation and Aggregation of (S, s) Rules for Automobile Purchases," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(4), pages 667-696.
    34. Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2005. "Changes in Consumption and Activities in Retirement," Working Papers wp096, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    35. Sarah Smith, 2006. "The Retirement-Consumption Puzzle and Involuntary Early Retirement: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(510), pages 130-148, March.
    36. John Strauss & Paul J. Gertler & Omar Rahman & Kristin Fox, 1993. "Gender and Life-Cycle Differentials in the Patterns and Determinants of Adult Health," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 28(4), pages 791-837.
    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. Sule Alan & Thomas Crossley & Hamish Low, 2012. "Saving on a Rainy Day, Borrowing for a Rainy Day," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 1212, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    2. Anikó Bíró, 2017. "Effect of ageing on the ownership of durable goods," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(5), pages 501-529, November.
    3. Edouard Augustin Ribes, 2021. "How does education influence individuals' use of bequests as a long-term care insurance?," Working Papers hal-03498481, HAL.
    4. Evren Damar & Ian Lange & Caitlin McKennie & Mirko Moro, 2024. "Banking deregulation and consumption of home durables," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 177(3), pages 1-20, March.
    5. Cristina Bernini & Maria Francesca Cracolici & Peter Nijkamp, 2020. "Micro and Macro Resilience Measures of an Economic Crisis," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 47-71, March.
    6. Sarah Brown & Mark N. Harris & Christopher Spencer & Karl Taylor, 2020. "Financial Expectations and Household Consumption: Does Middle Inflation Matter?," Working Papers 2020002, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    7. Cavallari, Lilia & Romano, Simone & Naticchioni, Paolo, 2021. "The original sin: Firms’ dynamics and the life-cycle consequences of economic conditions at birth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    8. Damar, H. Evren & Lange, Ian & McKennie, Caitlin & Moro, Mirko, 2020. "Banking deregulation and household consumption of durables," IWH Discussion Papers 18/2020, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    9. Zoë Fannon & B. Nielsen, 2018. "Age-period cohort models," Economics Papers 2018-W04, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    10. Wouter Nientker & Rob Alessie, 2019. "Female Labor Market Participation Across Cohorts: Evidence from the Netherlands," De Economist, Springer, vol. 167(4), pages 407-433, December.
    11. Alessandro Bucciol & Raffaele Miniaci, 2012. "Financial Risk Aversion, Economic Crises and Past Risk Perception," Working Papers 28/2012, University of Verona, Department of Economics.

    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. Li, Hongbin & Shi, Xinzheng & Wu, Binzhen, 2016. "The retirement consumption puzzle revisited: Evidence from the mandatory retirement policy in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 623-637.
    2. Lührmann Melanie, 2010. "Consumer Expenditures and Home Production at Retirement – New Evidence from Germany," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 225-245, May.
    3. 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.
    4. David M. Blau, 2008. "Retirement and Consumption in a Life Cycle Model," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 35-71.
    5. Velarde, Melanie & Herrmann, Roland, 2014. "How retirement changes consumption and household production of food: Lessons from German time-use data," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 3(C), pages 1-10.
    6. Erik Hurst, 2008. "The Retirement of a Consumption Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 13789, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Richard Dunn, 2015. "Labor supply and household meal production among working adults in the Health and Retirement Survey," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 437-457, June.
    8. Garry F. Barrett & Matthew Brzozowski, 2010. "Involuntary Retirement and the Resolution of the Retirement-Consumption Puzzle: Evidence from Australia," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 275, McMaster University.
    9. Choi, Kyoung Jin & Jeon, Junkee & Koo, Hyeng Keun, 2022. "Intertemporal preference with loss aversion: Consumption and risk-attitude," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    10. Velarde, Melanie & Herrmann, Roland, 2014. "Time use for consumption and household production of food: is there a retirement-consumption puzzle in Germany?," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182829, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    11. Ciani, Emanuele, 2016. "Retirement, pension eligibility and home production," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 106-120.
    12. Melanie Lührmann, 2010. "Consumer Expenditures and Home Production at Retirement – New Evidence from Germany," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 11(2), pages 225-245, May.
    13. Melanie Lührmann, 2005. "Population Aging and the Demand for Goods & Services," MEA discussion paper series 05095, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    14. Jim Been & Susann Rohwedder & Michael Hurd, 2021. "Households’ joint consumption spending and home production responses to retirement in the US," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 959-985, December.
    15. Aguiar, M. & Hurst, E., 2016. "The Macroeconomics of Time Allocation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 203-253, Elsevier.
    16. Margherita Borella & Flavia Coda Moscarola & Mariacristina Rossi, 2014. "(Un)expected retirement and the consumption puzzle," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 733-751, September.
    17. Chen, Qihui & Deng, Tinghe & Bai, Junfei & He, Xiurong, 2017. "Understanding the retirement-consumption puzzle through the lens of food consumption-fuzzy regression-discontinuity evidence from urban China," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 45-61.
    18. Hurd, Michael D. & Rohwedder, Susann, 2013. "Heterogeneity in spending change at retirement," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 1, pages 60-71.
    19. Kevin X. D. Huang & Frank Caliendo, 2011. "Rationalizing Multiple Consumption-Saving Puzzles in a Unified Framework," Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities, Higher Education Press, vol. 6(3), pages 359-388, September.
    20. Kevin X.D. Huang & Frank Caliendo, 2007. "Rationalizing Seven Consumption-Saving Puzzles in a Unified Framework," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0716, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    life cycle model; consumer behaviour; durables.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:koc:wpaper:1213. 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: Sumru Oz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dekoctr.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.