Working Paper
The effect of self-reported transitory income shocks on household spending
Ackerman, Samuel; Sabelhaus, John Edward (2012)
We use repeated cross-sections of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to study the effect of self-reported transitory income shocks on household food spending. The self-reported shocks in the SCF are derived from survey questions about the gap between actual and "normal" income. This approach stands in contrast to existing income shock measures in the literature, which are generally derived from the residuals of estimated earnings or income equations. Although the self-reported transitory shocks could potentially give very different answers, the overall variance and asymmetry of shocks ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2012-64