We review different empirical approaches that researchers have taken to estimate how
consumption responds to income changes. We critically evaluate the empirical evidence on …

The Great Recession has renewed interest in unemployment insurance (UI) programs
around the world. At the same time, there have been important advances in both theory and …

Using de-identified bank account data, we show that spending drops sharply at the large
and predictable decrease in income arising from the exhaustion of unemployment insurance …

We develop new evidence on the cumulative earnings losses associated with job
displacement, drawing on longitudinal Social Security records for US workers from 1974 to …

W HY DO PEOPLE save? J. Maynard Keynes (1936) lists eight motives which we reproduce
here with one addi-tion: 1 1." To build up a reserve against unforeseen contingencies"(the …

This paper uses a unique panel dataset of consumer financial transactions to study how
consumers respond to an exogenous unanticipated income shock. Consumption rose …

This paper examines the link between income and consumption inequality. We create panel
data on consumption for the Panel Study of Income Dynamics using an imputation …

This paper presents evidence that firms choose conservative financial policies partly to
mitigate workers' exposure to unemployment risk. We exploit changes in state …

This paper presents new evidence on why unemployment insurance (UI) benefits affect
search behavior and develops a simple method of calculating the welfare gains from UI …

I show existing evidence on labor supply behavior places an upper bound on risk aversion
in the expected utility model. I derive a formula for the coefficient of relative risk aversion (γ) …