IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mrr/papers/wp300.html

Expectations and Household Spending

Author

Listed:
  • Michael D. Hurd

    (RAND)

  • Susann Rohwedder

    (RAND)

Abstract

We estimate the effect of expectations about unemployment on household spending using high-frequency panel data from the RAND American Life Panel. The data were collected during the Great Recession and its aftermath, a time of great economic uncertainty. We use monthly data both on total household spending and on subcategories of spending. We find that changes in total spending made in response to changes in the chances of becoming unemployed are difficult to detect empirically. This is because many categories of spending, such as rent, utilities, and car payments, tend to be fixed from month to month. Nevertheless, when studying subcategories of spending that are more easily adjusted in the short-term we find significant effects. For example, in response to an increase from 0 to 1 in the probability of becoming unemployed, we estimate that households reduce spending on clothing by about 14%, dining out and other entertainment by 11%, and personal care by 12%.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2013. "Expectations and Household Spending," Working Papers wp300, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:mrr:papers:wp300
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp300.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Melvin Stephens, 2001. "The Long-Run Consumption Effects Of Earnings Shocks," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(1), pages 28-36, February.
    2. Michael D. Hurd & Daniel McFadden & Harish Chand & Li Gan & Angela Menill & Michael Roberts, 1998. "Consumption and Savings Balances of the Elderly: Experimental Evidence on Survey Response Bias," NBER Chapters, in: Frontiers in the Economics of Aging, pages 353-392, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Lena Dräger, 2016. "Are Consumers Planning Consumption According to an Euler Equation?," Working Papers 1621, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    2. Valentin Voytenkov & Olga Demidova, 2025. "The impact of the 2022 sanction crisis on household consumption in Russia: A quantitative analysis," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 79, pages 72-98.
    3. Keaton S. Miller & Wesley W. Wilson & Nicholas G. Wood, 2020. "Environmentalism, Stimulus, And Inequality Reduction Through Industrial Policy: Did Cash For Clunkers Achieve The Trifecta?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(3), pages 1109-1128, July.
    4. Federica Teppa, 2014. "Consumption behaviour and financial crisis in the Netherlands," DNB Working Papers 453, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    5. Lena Dräger & Giang Nghiem, 2021. "Are Consumers' Spending Decisions in Line with A Euler Equation?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(3), pages 580-596, July.

    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. Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley & Joachim Winter, 2014. "The Measurement of Household Consumption Expenditures," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 475-501, August.
    2. Martin Browning & Thomas F. Crossley & Guglielmo Weber, 2003. "Asking consumption questions in general purpose surveys," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(491), pages 540-567, November.
    3. van Soest, Arthur & Hurd, Michael, 2008. "A Test for Anchoring and Yea-Saying in Experimental Consumption Data," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103, pages 126-136, March.
    4. Camille Landais & Pascal Michaillat & Emmanuel Saez, 2018. "A Macroeconomic Approach to Optimal Unemployment Insurance: Applications," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 182-216, May.
    5. Vera Toepoel & Corrie Vis & Marcel Das & Arthur van Soest, 2009. "Design of Web Questionnaires," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 37(3), pages 371-392, February.
    6. François Gerard & Joana Naritomi, 2021. "Job Displacement Insurance and (the Lack of) Consumption-Smoothing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(3), pages 899-942, March.
    7. Charles Brown & James L. Medoff, 2003. "Firm Age and Wages," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(3), pages 677-698, July.
    8. Daniel McFadden, 2001. "Economic Choices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 351-378, June.
    9. Nicholas A. Jolly & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2023. "Health shocks and spousal labor supply: an international perspective," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(2), pages 973-1004, April.
    10. Rodica IANOLE & Elena DRUICA, 2015. "Testing the Keynesian consumption hypothesis on European panel data," Romanian Journal of Economics, Institute of National Economy, vol. 40(1(49)), pages 49-71, june.
    11. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2004:i:9:p:1-12 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Leena Rudanko, 2008. "Aggregate and Idiosyncratic Risk in a Frictional Labor Market," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series wp2008-009, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    13. Zafar, Rafia, 2022. "Intergenerational Mobility in Income and Consumption: Evidence from Indonesia," SocArXiv uzcfs, Center for Open Science.
    14. Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2006. "Economic Well-Being at Older Ages: Income- and Consumption-Based Poverty Measures in the HRS," NBER Working Papers 12680, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Ute Rink & Theresa Rollwage, 2022. "Household disability and time preferences: Evidence from incentivized experiments in Vietnam," TVSEP Working Papers wp-027, Leibniz Universitaet Hannover, Institute for Environmental Economics and World Trade, Project TVSEP.
    16. Dimitris Christelis & Dimitris Georgarakos & Tullio Jappelli & Luigi Pistaferri & Maarten van Rooij, 2019. "Asymmetric Consumption Effects of Transitory Income Shocks," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(622), pages 2322-2341.
    17. Bronchetti, Erin Todd, 2012. "Workers' compensation and consumption smoothing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(5), pages 495-508.
    18. Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2010. "Effects of the Financial Crisis and Great Recession on American Households," NBER Working Papers 16407, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Michael Hurd & Daniel McFadden & Angela Merrill & Tiago Ribeiro, 2000. "Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise? Socioeconomic Status and Morbidity/Mortality," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1887, Econometric Society.
    20. Alois Geyer & Daniela Kremslehner & Alexander Muermann, 2020. "Asymmetric Information in Automobile Insurance: Evidence From Driving Behavior," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 87(4), pages 969-995, December.
    21. Asad Islam & Jaai Parasnis, 2022. "Heterogeneous effects of health shocks in developed countries: Evidence from Australia," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(2), pages 471-495, October.

    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:mrr:papers:wp300. 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: MRRC Administrator The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MRRC Administrator to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isumius.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.