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

许多研究人员发现，生命周期/永久收入 消费理论不能解释总量的变动 消费和储蓄。决定储蓄的因素是什么 不清楚，特别是考虑到储蓄背后的动机不是 对所有人来说都一样。特别是，这些动机是 可能在不同的个体群体中存在显著差异， 不同的终生收入水平和/或不同的 终身收入。 在这个项目中，开发了一套关于一生收入的数据， 消费路径使用的数据从小组研究收入 消费者支出调查。使用期限数据 然后将用于确定生命周期在多大程度上 理论解释了不同类型的 消费者对于每一个消费者类别，观察到的 消费量将与寿命预测的消费量进行比较- 周期理论和其他解释所预测的。 这些替代方法包括“经验法则”，“行为法则”， 生命周期假设，流动性约束的存在，以及 近视 研究的最后阶段是超越偶然 经济学和发展更适当的计量经济学测试， 替代解释。消费函数与欧拉方程 方法将被考虑;然而，更强大的 测试可能是可能的，因为有大量的信息， 在生命周期数据集中可用。这样做的结果 研究将是更好地了解是什么决定了 积蓄

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.