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This year, the NBER Macroeconomics Annual celebrates its thirtieth volume. The first two papers examine China’s macroeconomic development. “Trends and Cycles in China's Macroeconomy” by Chun Chang, Kaiji Chen, Daniel F. Waggoner, and Tao Zha outlines the key characteristics of growth and business cycles in China. “Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom” by Hanming Fang, Quanlin Gu, Wei Xiong, and Li-An Zhou constructs a new house price index, showing that Chinese house prices have grown by ten percent per year over the past decade. The third paper, “External and Public Debt Crises” by Cristina Arellano, Andrew Atkeson, and Mark Wright, asks why there appear to be large differences across countries and subnational jurisdictions in the effect of rising public debts on economic outcomes. The fourth, “Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration” by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, and William Kerr, explains how the network structure of the US economy propagates the effect of gross output productivity shocks across upstream and downstream sectors. The fifth and sixth papers investigate the usefulness of surveys of household’s beliefs for understanding economic phenomena. “Expectations and Investment,” by Nicola Gennaioli, Yueran Ma, and Andrei Shleifer, demonstrates that a chief financial officer's expectations of a firm's future earnings growth is related to both the planned and actual future investment of that firm. “Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation” by Regis Barnichon and Andrew Figura shows that an increasing number of prime-age Americans who are not in the labor force report no desire to work and that this decline accelerated during the second half of the 1990s.

Functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs) describe patients who present with symptoms that arise from the gastrointestinal (GI) tract yet have failed to be explained by a standard GI work-up. Somatic findings at midthoracic levels correspond to localized visceral dysfunction such as decreased peristalsis and vasoconstriction. The somatovisceral concept suggests that osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) provides relief by normalizing the autonomic tone. There are few reports in the literature that provide examples of successful treatment of FGID by OMT. This case describes a patient with postprandial nausea and vomiting who was successfully treated with OMT.

We do not have a good measure of the effects of fiscal policy in a recession because the methods that we use to estimate the effects of fiscal policy—both those using the observed outcomes following different policies in aggregate data and those studying counterfactuals in fitted model economies—almost entirely ignore the state of the economy and estimate “the” government multiplier, which is presumably a weighted average of the one we care about—the multiplier in a recession—and one we care less about—the multiplier in an expansion. Notable exceptions to this general claim suggest this difference is potentially large. Our lack of knowledge stems significantly from the focus on linear dynamics: vector autoregressions and linearized (or close-to-linear) dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Our lack of knowledge also reflects a lack of data: deep recessions are few and nonlinearities hard to measure. The lack of statistical power in the estimation of nonlinear models using aggregate data can be addressed by exploiting estimates of partial-equilibrium responses in disaggregated data. Microeconomic estimates of the partial-equilibrium causal effects of a policy can discipline the causal channels inherent in any DSGE model of the general equilibrium effects of policy. Microeconomic studies can also provide measures of the dependence of the effects of a policy on the states of different agents, which is a key component of the dependence of the general-equilibrium effects of fiscal policy on the state of the economy. (JEL E12, E13, E32, E62, H50)

We document a large increase in the cyclicality of the incomes of high-income households, coinciding with the rise in their share of aggregate income. In the U.S., since top income shares began to rise rapidly in the early 1980s, incomes of those in the top 1 percent of the income distribution have averaged 14 times average income and been 2.4 times more cyclical. Before the early 1980s, incomes of the top 1 percent were slightly less cyclical than average. The increase in income cyclicality at the top is to a large extent due to increases in the share and the cyclicality of their earned income. The high cyclicality among top incomes is found for households without stock options; following the same households over time; for post-tax, post-transfer income; and for consumption. We study cyclicality throughout the income distribution and reconcile with earlier work. Furthermore, greater top income share is associated with greater top income cyclicality across recent decades, across subgroups of top income households, and, in changes, across countries. This suggests a common cause. We show theoretically that increases in the production scale of the most talented can raise both top incomes and their cyclicality.

Mandibular repositioning appliance (MRA) therapy for snoring and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is an accepted treatment option for patients with mild to moderate disease. A recent comprehensive review of oral appliance therapy reported that patients with mild to severe OSA had a 52% chance of having an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) < 10/h with a mandibular repositioning appliance.1 This rate of efficacy was not measurably better than that found in an earlier comprehensive literature review,2 despite improvements in the quality of the research studies and the introduction of titratable MRAs. In general, the adjustable MRA is initially set at 50% to 75% of maximum mandibular protrusion. The appliance is further advanced until symptoms improve or the maximum tolerated protrusion is reached. Overnight monitoring is usually done to determine the amount of objective improvement in apnea severity with MRA treatment. Despite the widespread use of titratable appliances, efficacy rates are not significantly better than those of fixed position appliances.1,2 Previous research has evaluated whether overnight titration of mandibular advancement during polysomnography could be used to initiate MRA therapy in a fashion similar to the titration of nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). The first study of overnight titration used an appliance that was removed from the patient's mouth and adjusted manually.3 Other titration studies have used a temporary appliance that can be adjusted either by awakening the patient4 or without awakening the patient.5,6 The temporary appliance was advanced either manually after removal of the temporary appliance,4 by a hydraulic system,5 or by remote control of a motorized system.6 However, results of these studies were mixed in terms of predicting the amount of advancement needed for successful MRA therapy. Furthermore, overnight titration of an MRA remains an experimental approach, and the technology for remote-controlled advancement is not widely available. Another method for appliance titration consists of clinical titration of the device to symptom resolution or to maximum tolerated advancement, with the addition of overnight home monitoring to determine objective improvement. The addition of home monitoring may provide data of an incomplete response that could allow further advancement to take place prior to outcome polysomnography (PSG). In a study of 40 patients using this approach, 64% of subjects had a complete response (AHI < 10/h with resolution of symptoms).7 Although this is a better success rate than in most studies of MRA therapy, many patients in this study were insufficiently treated despite an intensive clinical titration protocol. We evaluated a simple clinical protocol consisting of incremental advancement of an MRA by the patient to the point of good symptom control, followed by a titration PSG with the opportunity to further advance the appliance if needed. This titration PSG allowed for further advancement of the MRA during the night if the AHI remained high. The goal of the study was to determine if patients with an elevated AHI, despite the use of a clinically optimized MRA, could achieve better results with additional titration during the outcome PSG.

This paper evaluates theoretical explanations for the propensity of households to increase spending in response to the arrival of predictable, lump-sum payments, using households in the Nielsen Consumer Panel who received 25 million in randomly-distributed stimulus payments. The pattern of spending is inconsistent with models in which identical households cycle rapidly through high and low response states as they manage liquidity, but is instead highly predictable by income years before the payment. Spending responses are unrelated to expectation errors, almost unrelated to crude measures of procrastination and self-control, significantly related to sophistication and planning, and highly related to impatience.

The twenty-ninth edition of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual continues its tradition of featuring theoretical and empirical research on central issues in contemporary macroeconomics. Two papers in this year’s issue deal with recent economic performance: one analyzes the evolution of aggregate productivity before, during, and after the Great Recession, and the other characterizes the factors that have contributed to slow economic growth following the Great Recession. Another pair of papers tackles the role of information in business cycles. Other contributions address how assumptions about sluggish nominal price adjustment affect the consequences of different monetary policy rules and the role of business cycles in the long-run decline in the share of employment in middle-wage jobs. The final chapter discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the elimination of physical currency.

Under the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, most U.S. taxpayers received a tax rebate between July and September, 2001. The week in which the rebate was mailed was based on the second-to-last digit of the taxpayer's Social Security number, a digit that is effectively randomly assigned. Using special questions about the rebates added to the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we exploit this historically unique experiment to measure the change in consumption expenditures caused by receipt of the rebate and to test the Permanent Income Hypothesis and related models. We find that households spent about 20-40 percent of their rebates on non-durable goods during the three-month period in which their rebates were received, and roughly another third of their rebates during the subsequent three-month period. The implied effects on aggregate consumption demand are significant. The estimated responses are largest for households with relatively low liquid wealth and low income, consistent with liquidity constraints.

This paper uses the consumption Euler equation to derive a decomposition of consumption growth into four sources. These four sources are new information, and three sources of predictable consumption growth: intertemporal substitution, changes in the preferences for consumption, and incomplete markets for consumption insurance. Using household-level data, we implement this decomposition for the average growth rate of consumption expenditures on nondurable goods in the United States from 1982 to 1997. The economic importance of precautionary saving rivals that of the real interest rate, but the relative importance of each source of movement in the volatility of consumption is not precisely measured.

U.S. stock returns are large, predictable over time, and predictable across stocks. The average return on a diversified market portfolio has averaged 8 percent per year more than the return on a short-term treasury bill. The predictability of time variation in returns is modest at high frequencies (about 10 percent of the variation in returns one quarter ahead is predictable) and quite large over longer periods (just under half of the variation in returns over five-year periods is predictable). Finally, portfolios based on the intersection of quintiles of stocks ranked by market value and by the ratio of book value to market value have differences in average annual returns across stocks of several percent per year. The natural explanation for these variations in returns is risk. But variations in consumption risk have done a poor job of explaining these differences in expected returns (see e.g., Sanford J. Grossman and Robert J. Shiller, 1981; Shiller, 1982; Lars Peter Hansen and Kenneth J. Singleton, 1983; N. Gregory Mankiw and Mat

This paper employs a synthetic cohort technique and Consumer Expenditure Survey data to construct average age-profiles of consumption and income over the working lives of typical households across different education and occupation groups. Using these profiles, we estimate a structural model of optimal life-cycle consumption expenditures in the presence of realistic labor income uncertainty. The model fits the profiles quite well. In addition to providing tight estimates of the discount rate and risk aversion, we find that consumer behavior changes strikingly over the life-cycle. Young consumers behave as buffer-stock agents. Around age 40, the typical household starts accumulating liquid assets for retirement, and its behavior mimics more closely that of a certainty equivalent consumer. This change in behavior is mostly driven by the life-cycle profile of expected income. Our methodology provides a natural decomposition of saving into its precautionary and retirement components.

Households in the Nielsen Consumer Panel were surveyed about their 2008 Economic Stimulus Payment. In estimates identified by the randomized timing of disbursement, the average household’s spending rose by ten percent the week it received a Payment and remained high cumulating to 1.5–3.8 percent of spending over three months. These estimates imply partial-equilibrium increases in aggregate demand of 1.3 percent of consumption in the second quarter of 2008 and 0.6 percent in the third. Spending is concentrated among households with low wealth or low past income; a household’s spending did not increase significantly when it learned about its Payment.

OVER THE PAST century in the United States, the average annual return on the stock market has exceeded that on short-term government bonds by 6 percentage points. The natural economic explanation for the premium on equity is the greater risks associated with investing in the stock market. However, the large premium that we observe cannot be explained by the canonical, consumption-based asset pricing model. Risk is best measured as the extent to which a return alters marginal utility. Since marginal utility is closely related to consumption, and consumption moves little with returns, the measured risk of the stock market is small. (1) One common informal interpretation of this equity premium puzzle is that stocks are a good deal. In this view, the model is taken as a reasonably accurate description of optimal behavior and a poor description of actual behavior. This normative view of the model and the data implies that households should increase their holdings of equity and even borrow to invest in the stock market. (2) Such thinking has also entered important areas of public policy, most notably in proposals to allow funds from the Social Security system--whether the current $1 trillion surplus in the trust fund or the entire $10 trillion in implicit liabilities--to be invested in the stock market rather than entirely in government bonds as is currently done. The positive view of the equity premium puzzle is that we simply do not understand asset prices. Since the puzzle was discovered, economists' efforts to find a model that rationalizes the premium have yielded little success. That is, there is as yet no model of a household investment problem with reasonable levels of risk aversion that explains the variation in returns over time, and the difference in returns between stocks and bonds in particular. This leaves economists largely unable to model investment behavior and largely unable to provide policymakers with guidance for the diversification of the Social Security system. This paper proposes an understanding of the risk-return trade-off between stocks and bonds that departs from the canonical model in two ways. First, I ignore many issues in asset pricing and focus solely on the ultimate risk to consumption of a given portfolio choice. That is, rather than measure the risk to consumption as the contemporaneous response of consumption to returns on the stock market, this paper measures the risk as the medium-term impact of stock market returns on consumption. (3) Second, in addition to studying the medium-term risk of equity as measured by aggregate consumption data, I follow Gregory Mankiw and Stephen Zeldes and ask whether the risk of equity justifies its return for the subset of households that hold equity. (4) The main finding of the paper is that the medium-term risk of equity is much greater than the contemporaneous risk, both for the representative household and for the representative stock. holder. For households that hold equity, the medium-term risk is largely sufficient to justify the high relative return of equity. Measuring the risk of equity as the medium-term impact of a return on consumption has several appealing features. First, this approach maintains the assumption that the primary determinant of utility is the level of consumption. This assumption is intuitive and has proved useful and successful in many other branches of economics. Second, this approach is consistent with the theory of portfolio choice in that the medium-term risk and the contemporaneous risk should be approximately the same according to the canonical model. Most important, the medium-term risk is a better measure of the true risk of the stock market under a wide class of extant models used in the study of household consumption and saving. If consumption responds with a lag to changes in wealth, then the contemporaneous covariance of consumption and wealth understates the risk of equity, and the medium-term risk provides the correct measure. …

The key implication of rational expectations and the basic life-cycle/permanent-income hypothesis: that predictable changes in income have no effect on the growth rate of consumption expenditures, is examined. This implication is important for understanding the effectiveness and optimal timing of fiscal policy, the causes and propagation of business cycles, and the effects of income fluctuations on the growth rate of the economy. Using household-level consumption data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, whether expenditures on nondurable goods increase contemporaneously with predictable changes in Social Security tax withholding is tested. It is found that households do change their consumption expenditures in response to the predictable fluctuations in income induced by the Social Security tax system.

I. INTRODUCTION The popular characterization of completing and mailing individual tax forms is that people wait until the last minute to fill out their returns, and then rush to mail them at their nearest post office, which has extended its hours until midnight. This phenomenon, which we call "April 15 syndrome," has large private costs. We estimate that for tax year 1988 the 73.2 million taxpayers claiming refunds gave up nearly one billion dollars in interest, or an average of about $13.50 per return, due to filing the forms later than the earliest possible time.(1) More incomprehensible from an economic standpoint, but of less quantitative significance, are the impatient tax filers - 10.5 million taxpayers who owed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) money and passed up $46 million in interest by mailing in their taxes before the filing deadline. In addition to these direct costs, tax returns done in haste at the last minute may be more prone to error; to the extent they are not caught by the IRS, this adds to the capriciousness of the tax burden. Correcting the errors due to rushed completing of forms also adds to the administrative costs of the IRS. Many cities and towns keep their post offices open late for no reason other than to accommodate the severe procrastinator. Finally, return processing is slowed by the avalanche of returns filed in mid-April. We present some exploratory analyses of April 15 syndrome using 1988 tax return data. After describing in section II the legal framework for tax filing, in section III we discuss the data and present the basic facts with which any model of filing behavior has to contend. There is a wide distribution of filing times, and a substantial fraction of households which, despite being owed refunds, file late, or which, despite owing taxes, file early. In section IV, we consider some basic models of the decision as to when to file one's taxes. We note that the simplest model fails to rationalize the most obvious characteristic of the data the substantial heterogeneity of filing times. In the baseline rational model individuals simply maximize their income less effort, which involves either complete procrastination or prompt filing. Adding imperfect information does not seem to eliminate the result. We are led to a model in which individuals have a stochastic opportunity cost of doing their taxes. This model generates a wide distribution of filing times for returns which will get refunds and rationalizes procrastination. However, our framework fails to generate early filing of returns with taxes due, and we consider the issue again after our analysis of the data. In section V, we take the predictions of our model to the data. We examine the various characteristics of refund and remittance returns and perform some reduced-form regressions of the determinants of return filing time. Most supportive of our interpretation of late filing for refunds, there is much less procrastination for returns which are filled out by a paid preparer, than for returns which are filed by the taxpayer. Further, we find that the complexity of forms delays filing, both for returns with tax due and for those with refunds. People with a higher marginal valuation of time, proxied by higher incomes, are more likely to file later, and the larger the refund value, the sooner the return is expected to be filed. Returns which are completed by professional tax preparers do not exhibit these last two characteristics. Finally, cross-year analysis demonstrates that filing late is habitual, suggesting that households have persistently different values of time or propensities to procrastinate. We conclude by speculating on the objectives and constraints which might generate early filing by individuals with taxes due and by considering the implications of our findings. We believe that our investigation of the timing of tax return filing informs us about other examples of apparently non-optimal timing of economic behavior. …

We explore household consumption surrounding federal tax returns filings and refunds receipt to test various theories of consumption. Because uncertainty regarding the refund is resolved at filing, precautionary savings theory predicts an increase in consumption at this date. Contrary to this prediction, we find that households generally do not increase consumption at filing. Following the receipt of the refunds, consumption of both durables and nondurables increases dramatically and then decays quickly. Our results show that households, on average, are financially constrained, exhibit myopic behavior, and do not respond to precautionary savings motives.

The use of metaphors to illustrate the conceptual frameworks of schools, colleges, and departments of education has become commonplace since the implementation of the 1987 knowledge base standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. Concurrently, a number of researchers have explored the metaphors that both practicing and preservice teachers use to describe their conceptualization of teaching and have found that metaphor development is important in the construction of the identity of a professional teacher. This paper describes an assignment given in a social foundations course in which students are asked to integrate their own personal metaphor of teaching with the metaphor employed by the institution in its conceptual framework. Examples of student responses to this assignment are given.

This chapter describes a system, called the LEADS system, for providing market participants, regulators, and households with information on the reallocation of resources within, from, and to the household sector in response to macroeconomic events. The household sector is both a propagator of shocks to the economy, as wealth is redistributed across households with differing propensities to consume, and an originator of risky claims held in systemically important places, as losses are shifted from households to creditors such as financial institutions. Information about these exposures, like information generally, is conveyed by prices and so is under-produced by markets. The LEADS system - collection, analysis, and distribution of information on household exposures to macroeconomic risk factors - can potentially lead to better macroeconomic performance through better informed public policy and private decision- making

We measure the response of household spending to the economic stimulus payments (ESPs) disbursed in mid-2008, using special questions added to the Consumer Expenditure Survey and variation arising from the randomized timing of when the payments were disbursed. We find that, on average, households spent about 12-30% (depending on the specification) of their stimulus payments on non-durable expenditures during the three-month period in which the payments were received. Further, there was also a substantial and significant increase in spending on durable goods, in particular vehicles, bringing the average total spending response to about 50-90% of the payments. Relative to research on the 2001 tax rebates, these spending responses are estimated with greater precision using the randomized timing variation. The estimated responses are substantial and significant for older, lower-income, and home-owning households. We further extend the literature in two ways. First, we find little evidence that the propensity to spend varies with the method of disbursement (paper check versus electronic transfer). Second, we evaluate a complementary methodology for quantifying the impact of tax cuts, which asks consumers to self-report whether they spent their tax cuts. The response of spending to the ESPs is indeed largest for self-reported spenders. However, self-reported savers also spent a significant fraction of the payments.

(1993). Lecturing and Loving It: Applying the Information-Processing Model. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas: Vol. 67, No. 1, pp. 8-11.

all projects are funded. In the region of multiplicity, the move from a pooling (socially efficient) equilibrium to a valuation (socially inefficient) equilibrium involves many features of a financial crisis: prices decline (interest spreads rise); real investment declines; unsophisticated investors leave the market (flight to quality) and sophisticated investors make profits; trust declines and due diligence increases.

The initial implementation of the System of National Accounts (1993) for the United States by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Federal Reserve Board has two significant advantages for economists. First, the SNA are organized according to sectors of the economy defined by economic agents: firms, financial institutions, consumers, governments and the rest of the world. Second, the accounts integrate real and financial information, so that one can track not only production of, income from, and use of output, but also net lending, net borrowing, and net worth by sector. We exploit these two features in the SNA accounts to examine US economic history leading up to the financial crisis of 2007 and recession of 2008. First, the SNA data show recent increases in leverage in the household sector. We track the household shift to a net lending position through the capital and current accounts of the household sector and then the other SNA sectors. Second, in the financial businesses sector, the accounts largely miss the rise in exposure to the US housing market as well as the critical factors that significantly spread and amplified the housing-market related changes throughout the financial system and the real economy. Finally we present three ways in which SNA-type accounts could be improved to presage a similar future crisis.

The consumption of high-consumption households is more exposed to fluctuations in aggregate consumption and income than that of low-consumption households in the Consumer Expenditure (CEX) Survey. The exposure to aggregate consumption growth of households in the top 10 percent of the consumption distribution in the CEX is about five times that of households in the bottom 80 percent. Given real aggregate per capita consumption growth about 3 percentage points less than its historical mean during the past year, these figures predict that the ratio of consumption of the top 10 percent to the bottom 80 percent has fallen by about 15 percentage points (relative to trend). Using income data from Piketty and Saez (2003), we show that the income (especially the wage income) of rich households is more exposed to aggregate fluctuations, so their higher income exposure is a likely contributor to their higher consumption exposure. Finally, we find a striking change in the exposure of the incomes of high-income households: prior to the early 1980's, the incomes of high-income households were not more exposed to aggregate fluctuations. Thus, while high-income households currently bear an inordinately large share of aggregate fluctuations, this is a recent occurrence.

People tend to underestimate the work involved in completing tasks and consequently finish tasks later than expected or do an inordinate amount of work right before projects are due. We present a theory in which people underpredict and procrastinate because the ex-ante utility benefits of anticipating that a task will be easy to complete outweigh the average ex-post costs of poor planning. We show that, given a commitment device, people self-impose deadlines that are binding but require less smoothing of work than those chosen by a person with objective beliefs. We test our theory using extant experimental evidence on differences in expectations and behavior. We find that reported beliefs and behavior generally respond as our theory predicts. For example, monetary incentives for accurate prediction ameliorate the planning fallacy while incentives for rapid completion aggravate it.

Human beings want to believe that good outcomes in the future are more likely, but also want to make good decisions that increase average outcomes in the future. We consider a general equilibrium model with complete markets and show that when investors hold beliefs that optimally balance these two incentives, portfolio holdings and asset prices match six observed patterns: (i) because the cost of biased beliefs are typically second-order, investors typically hold biased assessments of probabilities and so are not perfectly diversified according to objective metrics; (ii) because the costs of biased beliefs temper these biases, the utility costs of the lack of diversification are limited; (iii) because there is a complementarity between believing a state more likely and purchasing more of the asset that pays off in that state, investors over-invest in only one Arrow-Debreu security and smooth their consumption well across the remaining states; (iv) because different households can settle on different states to be optimistic about, optimal portfolios of ex ante identical investors can be heterogeneous; (v) because low-price and low-probability states are the cheapest states to buy consumption in, overoptimism about these states distorts consumption the least in the rest of the states, so that investors tend to overinvest in the most skewed securities; (vi) finally, because investors with optimal expectations have higher demand for more skewed assets, ceteris paribus, more skewed asset can have lower average returns.

This paper argues that taxation of retained profits is particularly distortionary in an economy with good growth prospects and poorly developed financial markets because it primarily reduces the investment of financially constrained firms, investment that has marginal product greater than the after-tax market real interest rate. Contrarily, taxes on distributed profits or capital gains primarily reduce the investment of financially unconstrained firms. Chile experienced a banking crisis over the period from 1982 to 1986 and in 1984 reduced its tax rate on retained profits from 50 percent to 10 percent. We show that, consistent with our theory, there was a large increase in aggregate investment after the reform which was entirely funded by an increase in retained profits. Further, we show that investment grew by more in industries that depend more on external financing, according to the Rajan and Zingales (1998) measure. Finally, we present some weak evidence from comparisons of investment rates across firms for several different measures of their likelihood of being financially constrained.

This paper argues that taxation of retained profits is particularly distortionary in an economy with good growth prospects and poorly developed financial markets because it primarily reduces the investment of financially constrained firms, investment that has marginal product greater than the after-tax market real interest rate. Contrarily, taxes on distributed profits or capital gains primarily reduce the investment of financially unconstrained firms. Chile experienced a banking crisis over the period from 1982 to 1986 and in 1984 reduced its tax rate on retained profits from 50 percent to 10 percent. We show that, consistent with our theory, there was a large increase in aggregate investment after the reform which was entirely funded by an increase in retained profits. Further, we show that investment grew by more in industries that depend more on external financing, according to the Rajan and Zingales (1998) measure. Finally, we present some weak evidence from comparisons of investment rates across firms for several different measures of their likelihood of being financially constrained.

This paper evaluates the central insight of the consumption capital asset pricing model that an asset’s expected return is determined by its equilibrium risk to consumption. Rather than measure risk by the contemporaneous covariance of an asset’s return and consumption growth, we measure risk by the covariance of an asset’s return and consumption growth cumulated over many quarters following the return. While contemporaneous consumption risk explains little of the variation in average returns across the 25 Fama‐French portfolios, our measure of ultimate consumption risk at a horizon of three years explains a large fraction of this variation.

Under the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, most U.S. taxpayers received a tax rebate between July and September, 2001. The week in which the rebate was mailed was based on the second-to-last digit of the taxpayer's Social Security number, a digit that is effectively randomly assigned. Using special questions about the rebates added to the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we exploit this historically unique experiment to measure the change in consumption expenditures caused by receipt of the rebate and to test the Permanent Income Hypothesis and related models. We find that households spent about 20-40 percent of their rebates on non-durable goods during the three-month period in which their rebates were received, and roughly another third of their rebates during the subsequent three-month period. The implied effects on aggregate consumption demand are significant. The estimated responses are largest for households with relatively low liquid wealth and low income, consistent with liquidity constraints.

As a former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski possesses a unique knowledge of America's standing in the world, which is shown in his book, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of G...

This paper evaluates the central insight of the Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM) that an asset's expected return is determined by its equilibrium risk to consumption. Rather than measure the risk of a portfolio by the contemporaneous covariance of its return and consumption growth - as done in the previous literature on the CCAPM and the pattern of crosssectional returns - we measure the risk of a portfolio by its ultimate consumption risk defined as the covariance of its return and consumption growth over the quarter of the return and many following quarters. While contemporaneous consumption risk explains little of the variation in observed average returns across the Fama and French 25 portfolios, ultimate consumption risk at a horizon of three years explains a large fraction of this variation.

This paper uses the consumption Euler equation to derive a decomposition of consumption growth into four sources. These are new information and three sources of predictable consumption growth: intertemporal substitution, changes in the preferences for consumption, and incomplete markets for consumption insurance. Using data on the expenditures of households, we implement the decomposition for the average growth rate of consumption expenditures on nondurable goods in the U.S. from the beginning of 1982 to the end of 1997. Incomplete markets for trading consumption in future states lead to statistically significant and countercyclical movements in expected consumption growth: consumption growth is expected to be higher when the unemployment rate is high. The economic importance of precautionary saving rivals that of the real interest rate, but the relative importance of each source of movement in the volatility of consumption is not precisely measured.

This paper evaluates the central insight of the Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model (C-CAPM) that an asset's expected return is determined by its equilibrium risk to consumption. Rather that measure the risk of a portfolio by the contemporaneous covariance of its return and consumption growth -- as done in the previous literature on the C-CAPM and the pattern of cross-sectional returns -- we measure the risk of a portfolio by its ultimate consumption risk defined as the covariance of its return and consumption growth over the quarter of the return and many following quarters. While contemporaneous consumption risk has little predictive power for explaining the pattern of average returns across the Fama and French (25) portfolios, ultimate consumption risk is highly statistically significant in explaining average returns and explains a large fraction of the variation in average returns. Aditionally, estimates of the average risk-free real rate of interest and the coefficient of relative risk aversion of the representative household based on ultimate consumption risk are more reasonable than those obtained using contemporaneous consumption risk.

This paper evaluates the equity premium using novel data on the consumption of luxury goods. Specifying utility as a nonhomothetic function of both luxury and basic consumption goods, we derive pricing equations and evaluate the risk of holding equity. Household survey and national accounts data mostly reflect basic consumption and therefore overstate the risk aversion necessary to match the observed equity premium. The risk aversion implied by the consumption of luxury goods is more than an order of magnitude less than that implied by national accounts data. For the very rich, the equity premium is much less of a puzzle.

This paper introduces a tractable, structural model of subjective beliefs. Since agents that plan for the future care about expected future utility flows, current felicity can be increased by believing that better outcomes are more likely. On the other hand, expectations that are biased towards optimism worsen decision making, leading to poorer realized outcomes on average. Optimal expectations balance these forces by maximizing the total well-being of an agent over time. We apply our framework of optimal expectations to three different economic settings. In a portfolio choice problem, agents overestimate the return of their investment and underdiversify. In general equilibrium, agents' prior beliefs are endogenously heterogeneous, leading to gambling. Second, in a consumption-saving problem with stochastic income, agents are both overconfident and overoptimistic, and consume more than implied by rational beliefs early in life. Third, in choosing when to undertake a single task with an uncertain cost, agents exhibit several features of procrastination, including regret, inter-temporal preference reversal, and a greater readiness to accept commitment.

This paper evaluates the equity premium using novel data on the consumption of luxury goods. Specifying utility as a nonhomothetic function of both luxury and basic consumption goods, we derive pricing equations and evaluate the risk of holding equity. Household survey and national accounts data mostly reflect basic consumption, and therefore overstate the risk aversion necessary to match the observed equity premium. The risk aversion implied by the consumption of luxury goods is more than an order of magnitude less than that implied by national accounts data. For the very rich, the equity premium is much less of a puzzle. AS DEMONSTRATED BY GROSSMAN AND SHILLER (1981), SHILLER (1982), Mehra and Prescott (1985), and the extensive literature that follows, the risk of the stock market as measured by its co-movement with aggregate consumption is insufficient to justify the extent to which its average return exceeds the return on short-term government debt. We propose a partial resolution to this equity premium puzzle by distinguishing between the consumption of basic goods and that of luxury goods. Intuitively, rich households that hold most equity are almost satiated in their consumption of basic goods; wealth shocks are reflected in the consumption of luxury goods, which is much more responsive to stock returns than the consumption of basic goods. Specifically, we model utility as a function of the consumption of both a basic good, of which a certain amount is required in every period, and a luxury good, which has low marginal utility even at low consumption levels. With such preferences, households consume only basic goods at low levels of total expenditures, while the share of luxury goods in overall consumption rises with expenditures. Households display a high degree of risk aversion with respect to their consumption of basic goods, consistent with the subsistence aspect of

One of the basic motives for saving is the accumulation of wealth to insure future welfare. Both introspection and extant research on consumption insurance find that people face substantial risks that they do not fairly pool. In theory, the consumption and wealth accumulation of price-taking households in an economy with incomplete markets differs substantially from the behavior of these same households in the equivalent economy with complete-markets. The question we address in this article is whether we find this difference to be large in practice. What is the empirical importance of precautionary saving? We provide a simple decomposition that characterizes the importance of precautionary saving in the U.S. economy. We use this decomposition as an organizing framework to present four main findings: (a) the concavity of the consumption policy rule, (b) the importance of precautionary saving for life-cycle saving and wealth accumulation, (c) the contribution of changes in risk to fluctuations in aggregate consumption and (d) the significant impact of incomplete markets on aggregate fluctuations in calibrated general equilibrium models. We conclude with directions for future research.

During the past two decades, the personal saving rate in the United States has fallen from eight percent to below zero. This paper demonstrates that this change represents a major shift in the allocation of newly produced goods. The share of GDP that households consume rose by 6 percentage points since 1980. This increase occurred concurrently with a reduction in the growth rate of real consumption spending per person, high real rates of return, and an increasing ratio of aggregate wealth to income. Despite this last fact, wealth changes can explain little of the boom in consumption spending. The largest increases in national wealth post-date the consumption boom and households with different wealth levels have similar increases in consumption. The paper also finds that the changing age distribution of the U.S. population does not explain the consumption boom. While it may be that new wealthier cohorts are driving this boom, the preponderance of evidence suggest rather that the rising consumption to income ratio is due to a common time effect. The main findings of the paper are consistent with either an increase in the discount rate or with a general belief in better economic times in the future. Alternatively, the low rates of saving could be due to a combination of factors such as the increase in intergenerational transfers from the Social Security system raising the consumption of the elderly and an increase in access to credit and expanded financial instruments raising the consumption of the young.