Search Results
Individuals, married couples respond differently to U.S. income tax changes
Changes in effective income taxes can impact labor supply with different outcomes for married couples and singles, and changes can have a particularly notable impact on married women.
Working Paper
Why Do Households Save and Work?
This paper quantifies why households save and work using a life-cycle model that incorporates wage risk, endogenous labor supply of both spouses, marital transitions, health, medical expenses, mortality and bequest motives at the death of the first and last household member. We estimate it using PSID and HRS data and conduct counterfactuals to assess the quantitative role of individual mechanisms. Precautionary saving against wage risk is smaller than in models that abstract from labor supply and within-household insurance. Bequest motives and medical expenses remain important drivers of ...
Working Paper
Why Do Households Save and Work?
This paper develops and estimates a dynamic life-cycle model to quantify why households save and work. The model incorporates multiple sources of risk—health, marital status, wages, medical expenses and mortality—as well as endogenous labor supply and human capital accumulation, retirement, and bequest motives at the death of the first and last household member. We estimate it using PSID and HRS data for the 1941–1945 cohort via the Method of Simulated Moments. Eliminating bequest motives reduces aggregate wealth by 23.8% and labor earnings by 1.2%; removing medical expenses lowers them ...
Journal Article
Household Inequality and the Consumption Response to Aggregate Real Shocks
The drop in output and consumption that occurred during the Great Recession has been large and prolonged. Figure 1 displays per capita U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) between 1985 and 2016 and highlights the large drop in both consumption and output that occurred starting in 2007 and its parallel shift compared with the previous trend. In this article, we ask why consumption has dropped so much and has been recovering so slowly. We also ask to what extent household inequality before and after the Great Recession interacted with the recession ...
Journal Article
Medicaid and the elderly
In 2009, Medicaid spent over $75 billion on 5.3 million elderly beneficiaries. This article describes the Medicaid rules for the elderly and discusses their economic implications.
Journal Article
Evidence on entrepreneurs in the United States: data from the 1989–2004 survey of consumer finances
Using data from the Federal Reserve Board?s Survey of Consumer Finances, the authors examine characteristics of entrepreneurs and the businesses they run. Their analysis confirms that business owners are important sources of saving and wealth creation in the U.S. and that they are less risk averse than other wealthy households. This discounts the notion that the wealth of entrepreneurs disproportionately reflects a buildup of precautionary balances to guard against financial risk.
Journal Article
Consumption and the Great Recession
In 2009, Medicaid spent over $75 billion on 5.3 million elderly beneficiaries. This article describes the Medicaid rules for the elderly and discusses their economic implications.
Journal Article
Income inequality and redistribution in five countries
This article studies income inequality in five countries and compares the redistributive consequences of taxes and transfers across these countries.
Journal Article
Right before the end: asset decumulation at the end of life
Using data from the Asset and Health Dynamics of the Oldest Old survey, the authors find that the assets of people who die decline much faster than the assets of people who survive, even after controlling for age, sex, and initial asset levels. Out-of-pocket medical expenses right before death can deplete the assets of many elderly households and constitute an important reason to keep assets in old age.
Journal Article
The asset-backed securities markets, the crisis and TALF
The authors explain the role of asset-backed securities markets in generating credit and liquidity and how this role was disrupted during the financial crisis. They discuss the implementation of the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) and argue that this program helped reestablish the ABS markets and the credit supply. and the reversion to a stable fiscal regime.