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We examine changes in consumption and income inequality between 2000 and 2011. During the most recent recession, unemployment rose and asset values declined sharply. We investigate how the recession affected inequality while addressing concerns about underreporting in consumption data. Income inequality rose throughout the period from 2000 to 2011. The 90/10 ratio was 19 percent higher at the end of this period than at the beginning. In contrast, consumption inequality rose during the first half of this period but then fell after 2005. By 2011, the 90/10 ratio for consumption was slightly lower than it was in 2000.

Information costs, which comprise costs of gathering and processing information about stock values and costs of deciding how to respond to this information, induce a consumer to remain inattentive to the stock market for finite intervals of time. Whether, and how much, a consumer transfers assets between accounts depends on the costs of undertaking such transactions. In general, optimal behavior by a consumer facing both information costs and transactions costs is state-dependent, with the timing of observations and the timing and size of transactions depending on the state. Surprisingly, if the fixed component of the transactions cost is sufficiently small, then eventually, with probability 1, a time-dependent rule emerges: the interval between observations is constant and on each observation date, the consumer converts enough assets to liquid assets to finance consumption until the next observation. If the fixed component of transactions costs is large, the optimal rule remains state-dependent indefinitely.

Today, it is commonly presumed that significant movements in wealth will be associated with movements in consumer spending, either contemporaneously or subsequently. Quantitative estimates of roughly the magnitude reported by Modigliani are routinely cited in leading macroeconomic textbooks, and are important features of many contemporary macroeconomic models, including those still widely studies by both academic economists and practitioners. This paper reevaluates the empirical foundation for such estimates of the consumption-wealth link. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a surprisingly small fraction of variation is found in aggregate consumer spending. A variance-decomposition shows that the vast majority of quarterly fluctuations in asset values are attributable to transitory innovations that display virtually no association with consumption, contemporaneously, or at any future date. These findings have at least one important implication for monetary policy. Recent research has suggested that central banks pursuing inflation targets should ignore movements in asset values that do not influence aggregate demand. The results in this paper underscore the relevance of this recommendation, since they suggest that most changes in asset values are transitory and unrelated to consumer spending, the largest component of aggregate demand.

Laboratory and field studies of time preference find that discount rates are much greater in the short run than in the long run. Hyperbolic discount functions capture this property. This paper presents simulations of the savings and asset allocation choices of households with hyperbolic preferences. The behavior of the hyperbolic households is compared to the behavior of exponential households. The hyperbolic households borrow much more frequently in the revolving credit market. The hyperbolic households exhibit greater consumption income comovement and experience a greater drop in consumption around retirement. The hyperbolic simulations match observed consumption and balance sheet data much better than the exponential simulations.

This paper studies the role of fluctuations in the aggregate consumption-wealth ratio for predicting stock returns. Using U.S. quarterly stock market data, we find that these fluctuations in the consumption-wealth ratio are strong predictors of both real stock returns and excess returns over a Treasury bill rate. We also find that this variable is a better forecaster of future returns at short and intermediate horizons than is the dividend yield, the dividend payout ratio, and several other popular forecasting variables. Why should the consumption-wealth ratio forecast asset returns? We show that a wide class of optimal models of consumer behavior imply that the log consumption-aggregate wealth (human capital plus asset holdings) ratio summarizes expected returns on aggregate wealth, or the market portfolio. Although this ratio is not observable, we provide assumptions under which its important predictive components for future asset returns may be expressed in terms of observable variables, namely in terms of consumption, asset holdings and labor income. The framework implies that these variables are cointegrated, and that deviations from this shared trend summarize agents' expectations of future returns on the market portfolio.

Hyperbolic discount functions induce dynamically inconsistent preferences, implying a motive for consumers to constrain their own future choices. This paper analyzes the decisions of a hyperbolic consumer who has access to an imperfect commitment technology: an illiquid asset whose sale must be initiated one period before the sale proceeds are received. The model predicts that consumption tracks income, and the model explains why consumers have asset-specific marginal propensities to consume. The model suggests that financial innovation may have caused the ongoing decline in U. S. savings rates, since financial innovation increases liquidity, eliminating commitment opportunities. Finally, the model implies that financial market innovation may reduce welfare by providing \"too much\" liquidity.

This paper examines whether, in the absence of information on household income or consumption, data on household infrastructure, building materials, and ownership of certain durable assets can be used to measure inequality in living standards. Principal components analysis is used to obtain a relative measure of inequality, and a bootstrap prediction method is provided for use when auxiliary surveys are available. Mexican data is used to show that the inequality methods provided do provide reasonable proxies for inequalities in living standards. An application finds that after controlling for household income and demographics, school attendance of boys in Mexico is negatively related to state-level inequality.

Using data from India, we estimate the relationship between household wealth and children's school enrollment. We proxy wealth by constructing a linear index from asset ownership indicators, using principal-components analysis to derive weights. In Indian data this index is robust to the assets included, and produces internally coherent results. State-level results correspond well to independent data on per capita output and poverty. To validate the method and to show that the asset index predicts enrollments as accurately as expenditures, or more so, we use data sets from Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nepal that contain information on both expenditures and assets. The results show large, variable wealth gaps in children's enrollment across Indian states. On average a \"rich\" child is 31 percentage points more likely to be enrolled than a \"poor\" child, but this gap varies from only 4.6 percentage points in Kerala to 38.2 in Uttar Pradesh and 42.6 in Bihar.

This paper argues that considering the consumption growth of stockholders and two asset returns not only yields values of the EIS that are plausible, but also helps explain the equity premium puzzle. The evidence on the consumption, income and portfolios of stockholders is consistent with fairly plausible values of the coefficient of relative risk-aversion when using the preference specification of Larry Epstein and Stanley Zin (1991). Three Euler equations are used, one for each of the two assets considered, and on for the household's total wealth portfolio.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of heterogeneous beliefs in an otherwise standard competitive complete market economy. The construction of a consensus probability belief, as well as a consensus consumer, is shown to be valid modulo an aggregation bias, which takes the form of a discount factor. In classical cases, the consensus probability belief is a risk tolerance weighted average of the individual beliefs, and the discount factor is proportional to beliefs dispersion. This discount factor makes the heterogeneous beliefs setting fundamentally different from the homogeneous beliefs setting, and it is consistent with the interpretation of beliefs heterogeneity as a source of risk. We then use our construction to rewrite in a simple way the equilibrium characteristics (market price of risk, risk premium, risk-free rate) in a heterogeneous beliefs framework and to analyse the impact of beliefs heterogeneity. Finally, we show that it is possible to construct specific parametrizations of the heterogeneous beliefs model that lead to globally higher risk premia and lower risk-free rates.