Karen E. Dynan

How Prudent are Consumers

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, this paper presents a simple test that provides an explicit estimate of the parameter in the utility function that reflects the strength of the precautionary saving motive, the coefficient of relative prudence. The test yields a fairly precise estimate of a small precautionary motive; in fact, the estimate is too small to be consistent with widely accepted beliefs about risk aversion. The presence of liquidity-constrained households does not appear to explain this finding, and there is some evidence that self-selection of households into risky environments also cannot explain the results.

Can financial innovation help to explain the reduced volatility of economic activity

The stabilization of economic activity in the mid 1980s has received considerable attention. Research has focused primarily on the role played by milder economic shocks, improved inventory management, and better monetary policy. This paper explores another potential explanation: financial innovation. Examples of such innovation include developments in lending practices and loan markets that have enhanced the ability of households and firms to borrow and changes in government policy such as the demise of Regulation Q. We employ a variety of simple empirical techniques to identify links between the observed moderation in economic activity and the influence of financial innovation on consumer spending, housing investment, and business fixed investment. Our results suggest that financial innovation should be added to the list of likely contributors to the mid-1980s stabilization.

Unemployment Risk and Precautionary Wealth: Evidence from Households' Balance Sheets

This paper examines precautionary behavior by relating job-loss risk to household net worth. We use existing best practice and some new strategies to deal with some problematic issues inherent in this literature regarding proxying uncertainty, instrumentation, and incorporating theoretical restrictions. We do not find precautionary variation in the wealth holdings of households with low permanent income, but do find precautionary effects for moderate and higher-income households. When the dependent variable is total net worth, these findings are robust to several alternative specifications. But we do not find precautionary responses in subaggregates of wealth that exclude home equity.

The Importance of Bequests and Life-Cycle Saving in Capital Accumulation: A New Answer

As the workhorse of consumption and saving research for the past four decades, the life-cycle model has proved flexible and useful for examining a variety of questions. In a classic paper, Albert Ando and Franco Modigliani (1963 p. 56) stated a key assumption of the basic model: “[t]he individual neither expects to receive nor desires to leave any inheritance.” Although the authors contended that the absence of a bequest motive was not critical to the heart of their results, the assumption set off a long-standing battle over the relative importance of different motives for saving. In an influential study, Laurence Kotlikoff and Laurence Summers (1981) estimated that a large fraction of the U.S. capital stock was attributable to intergenerational transfers. Modigliani and his collaborators vigorously disagreed and, based on their own empirical work, claimed that life-cycle saving was the primary source of capital accumulation (Modigliani, 1988). Subsequent work has failed to reach a consensus. Since this debate began, an important advance in the consumption literature has been the incorporation of uncertainty in life-cycle models (see e.g., R. Glenn Hubbard et al., 1995). We argue that allowing for uncertainty resolves the controversy over the importance of life-cycle and bequest saving by showing that these motives for saving are overlapping and cannot generally be distinguished. A dollar saved today simultaneously serves both a precautionary life-cycle function (guarding against future contingencies such as health shocks or other emergencies) and a bequest function because, in the likely event that the dollar is not absorbed by these contingencies, it will be available to bequeath to children or other worthy causes. Under this view, households have a bequest motive, but bequests are given (i.e., the motive is “operative”) in only some states of the world. Wealth is something like traveler’s checks: you take them along on vacation “just in case,” but odds are they will remain uncashed and available for sundry goods after the journey is complete. We first demonstrate the result using a simple model and then argue that this approach reconciles the apparent importance of bequests with households’ declared focus on life-cycle saving. Finally, we consider implications of our analysis.

Is a Household Debt Overhang Holding Back Consumption

The recent plunge in U.S. home prices left many households that had borrowed voraciously during the credit boom highly leveraged, with very high levels of debt relative to the value of their assets. Analysts often assert that this “debt overhang” created a need for household deleveraging that, in turn, has been depressing consumer spending and impeding the economic recovery. This paper uses household-level data to examine this hypothesis. I find that highly leveraged homeowners had larger declines in spending between 2007 and 2009 than other homeowners, despite having smaller changes in net worth, suggesting that their leverage weighed on consumption above and beyond what would have been predicted by wealth effects alone. Results from regressions that control for wealth effects and other factors support the view that excessive leverage has contributed to the weakness in consumption. I also show that U.S. households, on the whole, have made limited progress in reducing leverage over the past few years. It may take many years for some households to reduce their leverage to precrisis norms. Thus, the effects of deleveraging may persist for some time to come.

The Rise in U.S. Household Indebtedness: Causes and Consequences

The ratio of total household debt to aggregate personal income in the United States has risen from an average of 0.6 in the 1980s to an average of 1.0 so far this decade. In this paper we explore the causes and consequences of this dramatic increase. Demographic shifts, house price increases, and financial innovation all appear to have contributed to the rise. Households have become more exposed to shocks to asset prices through the greater leverage in their balance sheets, and more exposed to unexpected changes in income and interest rates because of higher debt payments relative to income. At the same time, an increase in access to credit and higher levels of assets should give households, on average, a greater ability to smooth through shocks. We conclude by discussing some of the risks associated with some households having become very highly indebted relative to their assets.

Do Provisional Estimates of Output Miss Economic Turning Points

Initial estimates of aggregate output and its components are based on very incomplete source data, so they may not fully capture shifts in economic conditions. In particular, if those estimates are based partly on trends in preceding quarters, provisional estimates may overstate activity when actual output is decelerating and understate it when actual output is accelerating. We examine this issue using the Real Time Data Set for Macroeconomists, which contains contemporaneous estimates of GNP or GDP and its components beginning in the late 1960s, as well as financial-market information and other data. We find that provisional estimates tend to partially miss accelerations and decelerations. We also consider whether better use of contemporaneous data could improve the quality of provisional estimates. We find that provisional estimates do not represent optimal forecasts of the current estimates, but that the improvement in forecast quality from including additional data appears to be quite small.

Wealth Effects and Macroeconomic Dynamics

The effect of wealth on consumption is an issue of long‐standing interest to economists. Conventional wisdom suggests that fluctuations in household wealth have driven major swings in economic activity both in the United States and abroad. This paper considers the so‐called consumption wealth effects. There is an extensive existing literature on wealth effects that has yielded some insights. For example, research has documented the relationship between aggregate household wealth and aggregate consumption over time, and a large number of household‐level studies suggest that wealth effects are larger for households facing credit constraints. However, there are also many unresolved issues regarding the influence of household wealth on consumption. We review the most important of these issues and argue that there is a need for much more research in these areas as well as better data sources for conducting such analysis.

Changing Retirement Behavior in the Wake of the Financial Crisis

The financial crisis and ensuing Great Recession left huge scars on household balance sheets, with households approaching retirement seeing the largest decline in wealth. This chapter examines how these households have adjusted to these developments. To date, most evidence on this question has come from surveys of household intentions. Using data on actual household behavior, we find that households nearing retirement are making up for financial losses by increasing saving and deferring retirement. They also appear to have reduced financial risk exposure by taking on less leverage and moving their portfolios in a more conservative direction. Disciplines Economics This working paper is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/prc_papers/171 Changing Retirement Behavior in the Wake of the Financial Crisis Julia Coronado and Karen Dynan September 2011 PRC WP2011-07 Pension Research Council Working Paper Pension Research Council The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania 3620 Locust Walk, 3000 SH-DH Philadelphia, PA 19104-6302 Tel: 215.898.7620 Fax: 215.573.3418 Email: prc@wharton.upenn.edu http://www.pensionresearchcouncil.org The authors thank John Soroushian for excellent research assistance, and David Richardson and participants at the Pension Research Council Spring Symposium for helpful comments. All findings, interpretations, and conclusions of this paper represent the views of the authors and not those of the Wharton School or the Pension Research Council.

Wealth Shocks and Macroeconomic Dynamics

The effect of wealth on consumption is an issue of longstanding interest to economists. Analysts believe that fluctuations in household wealth have driven major swings in economic activity. This paper considers so-called wealth effects—the impact of changes in wealth on household consumption and the overall macroeconomy. There is an extensive existing literature on wealth effects, but there are also many unanswered issues and questions. This paper reviews the important issues regarding the role wealth plays in the macroeconomy and argues that there is a need for much more wealth effect research as well as better data sources for conducting such analysis.