Consumption Over the Life Cycle: A Distributional Study of Theory vs. Evidence. ROW Planning Grant

生命周期中的消费：理论与证据的分布研究。

• 批准号: 9010308
• 负责人: Diane Rogers
• 金额: $ 1.11万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1990
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1990-07-15 至 1991-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9010308&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Consumption; Over; Life; Cycle; Distributional

Many researchers have found that the life cycle/permanent income theory of consumption fails to explain movements of aggregate consumption and savings. What does determine savings remains unclear, especially given that the motives behind savings are not the same for all individuals. In particular, such motives are likely to differ significantly across groups of individuals with different levels of lifetime incomes and/or different profiles of lifetime incomes. In this project, a data set is developed on lifetime incomes and consumption paths using data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. The lifetime data will then be used to ascertain to what extent the life cycle theory explains observed patterns for different types of consumers. For each consumer category, observed patterns of total consumption will be compared with those predicted by the life- cycle theory and those predicted by alternative explanations. These alternatives include "rules of thumb", the "behavioral" life-cycle hypothesis, the presence of liquidity constraints, and myopia. The final stage of the research is to go beyond casual empiricism and develop more appropriate econometric tests for the alternative explanations. Consumption function and Euler equation approaches will be among those considered; however, more powerful tests may be possible given the wealth of information that will be available in the lifetime data set. The result of this research will be a better understanding of what determines savings.

许多研究人员发现，消费的生命周期/永久收入理论无法解释总消费和储蓄的变动。决定储蓄的因素仍不清楚，特别是考虑到每个人储蓄背后的动机并不相同。特别是，在具有不同终生收入水平和/或不同终生收入状况的个人群体中，此类动机可能存在显着差异。 在该项目中，使用收入动态小组研究和消费者支出调查的数据开发了关于终生收入和消费路径的数据集。然后，生命周期数据将用于确定生命周期理论在多大程度上解释了不同类型消费者观察到的模式。对于每个消费者类别，观察到的总消费模式将与生命周期理论预测的模式以及其他解释预测的模式进行比较。 这些替代方案包括“经验法则”、“行为”生命周期假设、流动性限制的存在和短视。 研究的最后阶段是超越偶然的经验主义，并为替代解释开发更合适的计量经济学检验。消耗函数和欧拉方程方法将被考虑在内；然而，考虑到生命周期数据集中可用的大量信息，更强大的测试是可能的。这项研究的结果将是更好地了解决定储蓄的因素。