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United States households' consumption expenditures and car purchases collapsed during the Great Recession and more so than income changes would have predicted. Using CEX data, we show that both the extensive and the intensive car spending margins contracted sharply in the Great Recession. We also document significant cross‐cohort differences in the impact of the Great Recession including a stronger reduction in car spending by younger cohorts. We draw inference on the sources of the Great Recession by investigating which shocks can explain household choices in a 60 period life‐cycle model with idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks fitted to aggregate and life‐cycle moments. We find that the Great Recession was caused by a combination of large aggregate income and wealth shocks, while cross‐cohort adjustment patterns imply a role for life‐cycle income profile shocks. We also find a role for car loan premia shocks in accounting for car spending and car loans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contrasts the experiences of the United States and United Kingdom during and after the Great Recession to understand the role of financial shocks in the magnitude of the crises and length of the recoveries. It starts from the common consensus that the Great Recession first and foremost was a financial crisis. It shows that relative to the United States, the Great Recession in the United Kingdom was more closely associated with a decline in productivity. Motivated by the similar behavior of financial variables at a business cycle frequency, it contrasts the behavior of the U.S. and U.K. economies through the lens of a simple real business cycle model augmented with financial shocks. A credit channel that operates on firm hiring decisions captures the magnitude of the output decline in both the United States and United Kingdom but exaggerates the response of the hours margin for the United Kingdom. The conclusion is that the financial channel supported in the U.S. data seems less appropriate for understanding the U.K. experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]