an economic theory of self control the concept of self control is incorporated in a theory of individual intertemporal choice by modeling the individual as an organization the individual at a point in time is assumed to be both a farsighted planner and a myopic doer the resulting conflict is seen to be fundamentally similar to the agency conflict between the owners and managers of a firm both individuals and firms use the same techniques to mitigate the problems which the conflicts create this paper stresses the implications of this agency model and discusses as applications the effect of pensions on saving saving and the timing of income flows and individual discount rates

wage stagnation rising inequality and the financial crisis of 2008 the most widely embraced explanations of the financial crisis of 2008 have centered upon inadequate regulation stemming from laissez faire ideology combined with low interest rates although these widely acknowledged causal factors are true beneath them lie deeper determining forces that have received less notice wage stagnation and a dramatic increase in inequality in the u s over the preceding 35 years wage stagnation and heightened inequality generated three dynamics that made the economy vulnerable to systemic dysfunction the first is that they constrained consumption reducing profitable investment potential in the real economy and thereby encouraging an every wealthier elite to flood financial markets with credit helping keep interest rates low encouraging the creation of new credit instruments and greater indebtedness and fueling speculation the second dynamic is that consumption externalities were generated forcing individuals to struggle harder to find ways to maintain the welfare of their families and maintain their relative social status the consequence was that over the preceding three decades household saving rates plummeted households took on ever greater debt and worked longer hours the third dynamic is that as the rich took larger shares of income and wealth they gained more command over ideology and hence politics reducing the size of government cutting taxes on the rich and reducing welfare for the poor deregulating the economy and failing to regulate newly evolving credit instruments flowed out of this ideology

public pension reform in europe policies prospects and evaluation this paper describes the demographic and economic factors underlying the reform of public pension programmes in europe it examines the policy response both at the europe wide level and within individual european countries several programme reform strategies that have been implemented are evaluated these strategies are the greater pre funding of public pensions and expanded second tier private pension components parametric reforms to existing programmes and the development of formula driven actuarially fair public programmes efforts to provide greater incentives for individuals to postpone retirement are also discussed

using state pension shocks to estimate fiscal multipliers since the great recession has government spending raised income and employment since 2008 i use new data on state pension returns during the great recession to recover exogenous changes in spending instrumenting with these return shocks i estimate that each dollar of windfall financed spending raised local incomes by 1 43 and every additional 22 011 of spending created one contemporaneous job these estimates are similar to those found in shoag 2010 despite the non overlapping datasets unlike shoag 2010 however the bulk of the employment increase post 2008 stems from decreases in unemployment rather than increased labor force participation

employer matching and 401 k saving evidence from the health and retirement study abstract employer matching of employee 401 k contributions is often touted as a powerful incentive to save for retirement and is a key component in pension plan design in the united states using detailed administrative contribution earnings and pension plan data from the health and retirement study this analysis formulates a life cycle consistent econometric specification of 401 k saving and estimates the determinants of saving accounting for non linearities in the household budget set induced by matching the participation estimates indicate that an increase in the match rate by 25 cents per dollar of employee contribution raises 401 k participation by 5 percentage points the parametric and semi parametric estimates for saving indicate that an increase in the match rate by 25 cents per dollar of employee contribution raises 401 k saving by 365 in 1991 dollars overall the analysis reveals that the 401 k saving response to matching is quite inelastic and hence matching is a rather poor policy instrument with which to raise retirement saving

saving puzzles and saving policies in the united states in the past two decades the widely reported personal saving rate in the united states has dropped from double digits to below zero first we attempt to account for the decline in the national income and product accounts nipa saving rate the macroeconomic literature suggests that 40 50 per cent of the drop since 1988 can be attributed to households spending stock market capital gains another 30 per cent is accounting transfers from personal saving into government and corporate saving because of the way pensions and capital gains taxes are treated in the nipa second while nipa saving measures are well suited to measuring the supply of new funds for investment and capital accumulation it is not clear that they should be the target of government saving policies finally we emphasize that the nipa saving rate is not useful in judging whether households are preparing for retirement or other contingencies many households have accumulated significant wealth primarily through retirement saving vehicles and capital gains even as the saving rate slid there remains a segment of the population who save little and whose behaviour appears untouched either by the stock market boom or the slide in personal saving we explore reasons and policy options for their puzzling low saving rate copyright 2001 oxford university press

do tax incentives for saving in pension accounts cause debt accumulation evidence from danish register data abstract this paper applies a quasi experimental research design on a danish 2010 policy that reduced tax incentives for saving in annuity pension schemes to show significant substitution of savings from retirement accounts to gross debt repayments we find that for every 1 danish currency unit reduction in retirement savings 31 cents goes to debt repayments taking into account all types of savings we find full crowding out consistent with previous findings we document that the effect is driven by a minority about 23 percent who actively rebalance their savings

the assessment household saving issues in theory and policy in this assessment we discuss the issues raised by the papers in this issue of the oxford review of economic policy in the context of economic models of household consumption and saving we also provide a discussion of what we consider to be some important areas in the current debate surrounding theories and evidence regarding saving behaviour we highlight the differences that arise from considering partial as opposed to general equilibrium models and in looking at developed as opposed to developing countries we also discuss current policy issues relating both to the adequacy of household saving and to the distribution of saving across households or across asset types as well as the need for more microdata on saving and asset holding

commitment flexibility and optimal screening of time inconsistency this paper develops a theory of optimal provision of commitment devices to people who value both commitment and flexibility and whose preferences differ in the degree of time inconsistency if time inconsistency is observable both a planner and a monopolist provide devices that help each person commit to the efficient level of flexibility however the combination of unobservable time inconsistency and preference for flexibility causes an adverse selection problem to solve this problem the monopolist and possibly the planner curtail flexibility in the device for a more inconsistent person at both ends of the efficient choice range moreover they may have to add unused options to the device for a less inconsistent person and also distort his actual choices this theory has normative and positive implications for private and public provision of commitment devices

tax deferred accounts constrained choice and estimation of individual saving the paper analyzes the effect of tax deferred individual retirement accounts iras in the united states on net individual saving the results are based on a model of constrained optimization with the limit on tax deferred saving the principle constraint the estimates suggest that contributions to iras represent substantial net saving increases were the ira limit to be increased only about 10 to 20 of resulting increase in ira contributions would be taken from other savings about 50 would come from reduced consumption and about 35 from reduced

house prices home equity based borrowing and the u s household leverage crisis us household leverage sharply increased in the years preceding the 2007 eco nomic recession the top panel of figure 1 shows the steady rise in household debt since 1975 which accelerated beginning in 2002 in just five years the household sector doubled its debt balance in comparison the contemporaneous increase in corporate debt was modest the middle panel shows that the increase in household debt from 2002 to 2007 translated into a striking rise in household leverage as mea sured by the debt to income ratio during the same time period corporate leverage declined the dramatic absolute and relative rise in us household leverage from 2002 to 2007 is unprecedented compared to the last 25 years one reason for the rapid expansion in household leverage during this period is that mortgage credit became more easily available to new home buyers mian and sufi 2009 strong house price appreciation from 2002 to 2006 however which may have been fueled by the availability of mortgage credit to a riskier set of new home buyers could also have had an important feedback effect on household lever age through existing homeowners given that 65 percent of us households already owned their primary residence before the acceleration in house prices the feedback from house prices to borrowing may be an important source of the rapid rise in household leverage that preceded the economic downturn our central goals in this study are to estimate how homeowner borrowing responded to the increase in house prices and to identify which homeowners responded most aggressively we examine this home equity based borrowing channel using a dataset consisting of anonymous individual credit files of a national consumer credit bureau agency we follow a random sample of over 74 000 us homeowners who owned their homes as of 1997 at an annual frequency from the end of 1997 until the end of 2008 the bottom panel of figure 1 plots the growth in debt of 1997 homeowners over time and shows that existing homeowners borrow significantly more debt as their house prices appreciate from 2002 to 2006 while the aggregate trend is suggestive

how retirement saving programs increase saving this paper summarizes the authors work on the effect of ira and 401 k contributions on net personal saving they consider many different nonparametric approaches to controlling for heterogeneity in individual saving behavior and conclude that the weight of the available evidence suggests that contributions to both iras and 401 k s largely represent new saving the authors devote particular attention to reconciling their results with the findings in other studies that reach different conclusions sometimes using the same databases that the authors analyze methodological limitations that undermine the reliability of results in other studies explain many of these disparities

expanding the life cycle model precautionary saving and public policy one of the key puzzles in understanding saving behavior is not so much why people save the title of this session but why people don t save according to the familiar life cycle model households should accumulate wealth to provide for their retirement consumption the surprising result from the data is the sizable fraction of the population who have accumulated so little even among those nearing retirement given that earnings will almost surely decline when households retire such behavior can imply poor living standards for the elderly some might interpret the low wealth accumulation as being evidence of myopia irrationality or a failure of households to enforce mental accounting richard thaler 1994 while others might view the low level of wealth accumulation as evidence of high individual rates of time preference determining the underlying causes of low wealth is crucial for public policies that seek to alleviate low aggregate saving rates in the united states as well as policies that seek to buttress the adequacy of financial resources for the elderly in this paper we outline what we believe to be the causes of why many people do not save we conclude by speculating about government policies that may be most effective at encouraging saving much of the research examining levels of consumption saving and wealth as well as their responsiveness to policy has been done using a life cycle model with the simplifying assumption of perfect certainty alan auerbach and laurence kotlikoff 1987 for example developed a model with 55 overlapping generations of individual lifecycle households each with empirically plausible age earnings profiles and utility parameters and used the model to address tax policy and demographic issues in a regime in which all households are identical within a generation and all generations know future earnings and interest rates more recently a line of inquiry has examined the effects of uncertainty on saving generally in the context of highly stylized models this research has shown that in these models uninsured earnings uncertainty can alter optimal saving behavior in a variety of important ways for a partial review of this precautionary saving literature see hubbard et al 1994 in two recent papers hubbard et al 1993 1994 we have combined these two strands of the literature by examining the implications of a life cycle model of consumption saving and wealth accumulation subject to what we think are the three most important sources of uninsured idiosyncratic risk facing households uncertainty about earnings medical expenses and length of life our intent has been to create a realistic model in which families live for many periods working for part of their lives and retiring later in life to parameterize the uncertainty facing families we estimate tdiscussants christopher carroll federal reserve board john b shoven stanford university laurence kotlikoff boston university

mental accounting effects of income tax shifting abstract this paper analyzes a 1992 decrease in u s federal income tax withholding that shifted the timing of income tax payments while leaving ultimate tax burdens unchanged consequently income typically received as a lump sum refund on filing a tax return was shifted into the previous year s monthly income this paper considers the impact of the withholding change in the context of mental accounting and finds a decrease in the probability that households contributed to a tax preferred retirement account additional robustness tests show that short term saving did not simultaneously increase and that the main findings are not driven by liquidity constraints

regional transfer multipliers a series of discontinuities in the allocation mechanism of federal transfers to municipal governments in brazil allow us to identify the causal effect of public spending on local labour markets using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design rdd our estimates imply a cost per job of about 8 000 us dollars per year and a local income multiplier around two the effect comes mostly from employment in services and is more pronounced among less financially developed municipalities

great expectations and the end of the depression what ended the great depression in the united states this paper suggests that the recovery was driven by a shift in expectations this shift was triggered by president franklin delano roosevelt s fdr policy actions on the monetary policy side roosevelt abolished the gold standard and announced an explicit policy objective of inflating the price level to pre depression levels on the fiscal policy side roosevelt expanded real and deficit spending which helped make his policy objective credible the key to the recovery was the successful management of expecta tions about future policy roosevelt s rise to power is modeled as a policy regime change as in thomas sargent 1983 and peter temin and barry wigmore 1990 this paper formalizes temin and wigmore s argu ment in a repeated game setting using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model and argues that the regime change can account for the recovery in the model a regime change means the elimination of certain policy dogmas that constrain the actions of the government the regime change generates an endogenous shift in expectations due to a coordination of mon etary and fiscal policy this coordination ended the great depression by engineering a shift in expectations from contractionary i e the private sector expected future economic contrac tion and deflation to expansionary i e the public expected future economic expansion and inflation the expectation of higher future inflation lowered real interest rates thus stimulating demand while the expectation of higher future income stimulated demand by raising permanent income

an inconvenient cost the effects of climate change on municipal bonds abstract counties more likely to be affected by climate change pay more in underwriting fees and initial yields to issue long term municipal bonds compared to counties unlikely to be affected by climate change this difference disappears when comparing short term municipal bonds implying the market prices climate change risks for long term securities only higher issuance costs for climate risk counties are driven by bonds with lower credit ratings investor attention is a driving factor as the difference in issuance costs on bonds issued by climate and nonclimate affected counties increases after the release of the 2006 stern review on climate change

have iras increased u s saving evidence from consumer expenditure surveys the vast majority of individual retirement account contributions represent net new saving based on evidence from the quarterly consumer expenditure surveys ces the results are based on analysis of the relationship between ira contributions and other financial asset saving the data show almost no substitution of iras for other saving estimates are based on a flexible constrained optimization model with the ira limit the principal constraint the implications of this model for saving in the absence of the ira option match very closely the actual non ira financial asset saving behavior prior to 1982 ira saving does not show up as other financial asset saving in the pre ira period

tax deferred savings plans and interest deductibility programs that defer taxes on savings e g rrsps or 401 k s are supposed to move income tax systems closer to the more efficient consumption tax whether or not rrsps move income tax systems away from or closer to a consumption tax depends on whether or not interest on debts incurred to make rrsp contributions is deductible for income tax purposes if people optimize as assumed in simple life cycle models then it may be that governments can convert a non linear income tax system to a proportional consumption tax system i argue this is plausible for some canadian households jel classification h21 h24 plans d epargne pour differer les impots et deductibilite des charges d interet les gouvernements ont mis en place des regimes d impots sur le revenu des personnes mais la plupart des gouvernements prennent des mesures pour attenuer les distorsions causees par la composante taxe sur l interet dans l impot sur le revenu un antidote populaire est le plan d epargne pour differer les impots pedi e g les reers ou 401 k s on pense que en reportant les impots sur les epargnes et les revenus d interet sur les epargnes de tels plans vont deplacer le regime fiscal d impot sur le revenu vers un regime plus efficient d impot sur la consommation l auteur suggere que l impact des pedi sur ce deplacement depend de la deductibilite de l interet sur la dette encourue pour faire les contributions aux fins de l impot sur le revenu si les gens optimisent comme on le pretend dans les modeles simples de cycles de vie alors il se peut que les gouvernements puissent convertir un systeme non lineaire d impot sur le revenu en un regime d impot proportionnel sur la consommation en permettant des pedi illimites et en prohibant la deductibilite des charges d interet

the real consequences of market segmentation we study the real effects of market segmentation due to credit ratings using a matched sample of firms just above and just below the investment grade cutoff these firms have similar observables including average investment rates however flows into high yield mutual funds have an economically significant effect on the issuance and investment of the speculative grade firms relative to their matches especially for firms likely to be financially constrained the effect is associated with the discrete change

information and ira participation the influence of tax preparers abstract the steep drop off in the number of individual retirement account ira contributors after 1986 has led to suggestions that taxpayers misunderstood and over reacted to the restrictions on deductible contributions imposed by the tax reform act of 1986 tax panel data is used to investigate the role of taxpayer misunderstanding in the drop off in ira contributors after 1986 the hiring of a tax preparer is the transmission mechanism for knowledge of the deductibility rules after 1986 the results suggest that more information and promotion of iras would have increased the probability of contributing to an ira in 1987 for high income taxpayers but would have decreased this probability for middle income taxpayers taxpayer confusion over the deductibility restrictions appears to have been resolved by 1988 therefore taxpayer misunderstanding did not play a major role in the steep drop off in the number of ira contributors after 1986

optimal transmission switching sensitivity analysis and extensions in this paper we continue to analyze optimal dispatch of generation and transmission topology to meet load as a mixed integer program mip with binary variables representing the state of the transmission element line or transformer previous research showed a 25 savings by dispatching the ieee 118 bus test case this paper is an extension of that work it presents how changing the topology affects nodal prices load payment generation revenues cost and rents congestion rents and flowgate prices results indicate that changing the topology to cut costs typically results in lower load payments and higher generation rents for this network computational issues are also discussed

how do contribution limits affect contributions to tax preferred savings accounts abstract contributions to tax preferred savings accounts are typically constrained by a contribution limit these limits influence contributions not only for taxpayers currently constrained by the limit but also for those contributing less than the limit i develop a simple life cycle model in which taxpayers exhibit use it or lose it contribution behavior this connects current contributions to future contribution limits and implies that an increase in contribution limits can decrease contributions empirical evidence from microdata provides support for the model using variation from canadian limit reforms i find that larger future contribution room is associated with smaller contributions

do 401 k contributions crowd out other personal saving during the late 1980s contributions to 401 k plans eclipsed contributions to individual retirement accounts iras as the leading form of tax deferred individual retirement saving in the united states in this paper we describe patterns of participation in 401 k plans contrast these patterns with ira participation and evaluate the net impact of 401 k contributions on personal saving we find that 401 k participation conditional on eligibility exceeds 60 at all income levels in contrast ira participation at the height of that program rose sharply with income we use two methods to evaluate the net saving effect of 401 k contributions on personal saving we compare the financial assets of families who are eligible for 401 k saving with the assets of those who are not eligible and we consider the change over time in the assets of like groups of savers we find little evidence that 401 k contributions substitute for other forms of personal saving including ira contributions

tax reform and retirement saving incentives take up of stakeholder pensions in the uk in april 2001 the uk government introduced stakeholder pensions a new private pension arrangement the reform also changed the structure of tax relieved pension contribution ceilings increasing their generosity for lower earners we examine the impact of these changes on private pension coverage using individual level data we use a difference in differences strategy with an estimator that is modified to allow for dichotomous outcomes contrary to the conventional wisdom that the stakeholder pension reforms had little or no impact on saving behaviour our results indicate that the change to the contribution ceilings affected private pension coverage rates among lower earners especially among women

durable goods and the forward looking theory of consumption estimates implied by the dynamic effects of money abstract in this paper we analyze the effects of money on the market for durable goods using quarterly us data we estimate the dynamic responses of the price and quantity of durable goods and housing to money supply shocks assuming only that money is neutral in the long run we then match these responses to those predicted by an equilibrium model of the markets for durable goods the model relies on the standard theory of intertemporal consumer choice and the trade off between durable and non durable goods we find that money has important dynamic effects on the markets for durable goods and that the theory provides a reasonable framework for interpreting these responses for plausible parameter values

education and saving the long term effects of high school financial curriculum mandates abstract over the last 40 years a majority of states have adopted consumer education policies and a sizable minority have mandated that high school students receive instruction on topics related to household financial decision making in this paper we attempt to determine whether these mandates have had any effect on subsequent decisions we exploit the variation in requirements both across states and over time to identify the effects of interest the evidence indicates that mandates have raised both exposure to financial curricula and subsequent asset accumulation once exposed students reached adulthood the estimated effects are gradual probably due to implementation lags

social security and individual welfare precautionary saving borrowing constraints and the payroll tax this paper examines the impact of social security on national saving and individual welfare in the presence of realistic capital market imperfections market failure in the private provision of annuities and restrictions on borrowing against anticipated future wages the introduction of social security increases lifetime welfare and reduces national saving if borrowing restrictions are absent however the increase in individual welfare is reduced and in some cases eliminated when borrowing constraints are taken into consideration the substantial difference suggests the importance of reexamining the proportional payroll tax finance of social security copyright 1987 by american economic association

does 401 k eligibility increase saving evidence from propensity score subclassification abstract by comparing 401 k eligible and ineligible households wealth this paper estimates that on average about one half of 401 k balances represent new private savings and about one quarter of 401 k balances represent new national savings responses to eligibility vary considerably however with households who normally save the most largely contributing funds they would have saved anyway this paper improves on previous research by 1 employing propensity score subclassification to control more completely for observed household characteristics 2 controlling for more household characteristics including several correlated with unobserved savings preferences and 3 adjusting the observed measure of households wealth to reduce measurement error

psychology and savings policies many observers of the current economic scene are concerned about the low rate of personal saving in the united states one well known researcher laurence kotlikoff 1992 calls the situation a crisis he proposes that each american worker receive an annual statement from the social security administration with projected benefits upon retirement arguing that if each of us got this statement our attention would be caught and perhaps our psychology of saving which is in such urgent need of redress would really change p 107 i agree with the thrust of kotlikoff s recommendations and join him in applauding steps that will alter the general public s psychology of saving however as economists we need to recognize that the economic theory of saving is similarly in urgent need of redress if we are to understand why people are saving so little and are to make helpful recommendations as to how to get people to save more we have to incorporate more of the psychology of saving into our economic theories kotlikoff s policy proposal while a sensible one highlights the growing gap between theory and policy prescription in this domain if households are acting in accordance with the life cycle theory of saving then undersaving is impossible so why do they need to have their psychology redressed and how does this psychology fit into the model this example reflects an increasing frustration in the economics community about personal saving many observers have come to the conclusion that the low saving rate represents an important problem on two fronts macroeconomists worry that the low saving rate will produce too little investment and microeconomists worry that individuals particularly the baby boomers are not putting enough away to finance a satisfactory lifestyle in retirement these are serious concerns however the frustration comes from the realization that even if there was agreement that the saving rate needs to go up economic theory offers little help in constructing a solution in the standard life cycle framework the only policy variable is the after tax rate of return to saving yet it is well known that the theory does not specify the sign of the relationship between the saving rate and the interest rate raising the interest rate increases the returns to saving but decreases the amount of saving necessary to yield any given future consumption level furthermore empirical estimates offer little help most studies are unable to reject the hypothesis that the elasticity of personal saving with respect to the interest rate is zero clearly this is frustrating the theory only gives us one lever to use and we don t know whether to push or pull with this background i wish to supply what should be considered good news the theory is misspecified life cycle models of saving fail to describe actual household saving in three important ways this failure of the theory is good news because by incorporating some basic psychology we can enrich the theory and generate specific policy recommendations in this paper i will begin by characterizing the problems with the theory and then go on to discussing the implications of modifying the theory

dynamic decision making with feasibility goals a procedural rationality approach this paper proposes a new framework of intertemporal choice decision making by means of so called feasibility goals these refer to the feasibility of certain target levels of consumption associated with specific future benchmark scenarios the feasibility goals framework takes into account bounded procedural rationality without stepping outside the realm of an optimization framework the paper has two aims first it provides a general characterization of the feasibility goals framework second it provides a simple life cycle model with feasibility goals to illustrate the applicability of the concept the life cycle model is promising for better understanding individual portfolio choice

the cost of uncertainty about the timing of social security reform abstract we develop a model to study optimal decision making in the face of uncertainty about the timing and structure of a future event the model is used to study optimal decision making and welfare when individuals face uncertainty about when and how social security will be reformed for young individuals with many years to optimally hedge the risks that they face the welfare cost of uncertainty about the timing and structure of reform is just a few basis points of total lifetime consumption in contrast the cost of reform uncertainty can be greater than 1 of total lifetime consumption for individuals close to retirement even if they have saved optimally up to that point finally the cost is significantly higher still for those who do not save optimally to hedge these risks

the value of school facility investments evidence from a dynamic regression discontinuity design author s cellini stephanie riegg ferreira fernando rothstein jesse abstract despite extensive public infrastructure spending surprisingly little is known about its economic return in this paper we estimate the value of school facility investments using housing markets standard models of local public goods imply that school districts should spend up to the point where marginal increases would have zero effect on local housing prices our research design isolates exogenous variation in investments by comparing school districts where referenda on bond issues targeted to fund capital expenditures passed and failed by narrow margins we extend this traditional regression discontinuity approach to identify the dynamic treatment effects of bond authorization on local housing prices student achievement and district composition our results indicate that california school districts underinvest in school facilities passing a referendum causes immediate sizable increases in home prices implying a willingness to pay on the part of marginal homebuyers of 1 50 or more for each 1 of capital spending these effects do not appear to be driven by changes in the income or racial composition of homeowners and the impact on test scores appears to explain only a small portion of the total housing price effect c 2010 by the president and fellows of harvard college and the massachusetts institute of technology

the behavioral life cycle hypothesis self control mental accounting and framing are incorporated in a behavioral enrichment of the life cycle theory of saving called the behavioral life cycle blc hypothesis the key assumption of the blc theory is that households treat components of their wealth as nonfungible even in the absence of credit rationing specifically wealth is assumed to be divided into three mental accounts current income current assets and future income the temptation to spend is assumed to be greatest for current income and least for future income considerable empirical support for the blc theory is presented primarily drawn from published econometric studies

how will 401 k pension plans affect retirement income two decades ago most workers with pensions had a defined benefit db plan the employer made necessary contributions and investments to meet promised pension benefit payments when the employee retired by 1993 the tide had turned more than half of covered employees participated primarily in defined contribution dc pensions such as 401 k plans employee benefit research institute ebri 1997 this dramatic shift was associated as well with growing concerns about the emerging 401 k plans some viewed 401 k plans as a crisis waiting to happen when current generations having made minimal or no contributions to their dc plan retired with inadequate pension asset balances karen ferguson and kate blackwell 1995 anne willette 1995 another concern was that workers switching jobs would use the lump sum distributions for houses boats or other purchases rather than reinvesting them in another retirement account ellen e schultz 1995 u s department of labor usdol 1998a in a similar vein newly retired workers may not roll over the assets into an annuity and therefore risk spending down their retirement wealth too early e g jeffrey r brown and mark j warshawsky 2001 the most serious charge against 401 k plans

precautionary saving a review of the empirical literature standard macroeconomic models show that uncertainty plays a significant role in consumption and saving decisions under rather mild conditions namely the convexity of the marginal utility of consumption increased uncertainty generates a positive extra saving the so called precautionary saving although this hypothesis has been tested by a large number of authors both at macro and micro level the empirical results are not conclusive and the main conclusion than can be drawn is that there is neither consensus on the intensity of that motive for saving nor on the most appropriate measure of uncertainty this paper provides a comprehensive review of the empirical literature discussing the main controversial issues and the different approaches followed by the studies addressing empirically the test of precautionary saving

do rating agencies benefit from providing higher ratings evidence from the consequences of municipal bond ratings recalibration we ask whether credit rating agencies receive higher fees and gain greater market share when they provide more favorable ratings to investigate this question we use the 2010 rating scale recalibration by moody s and fitch which increased ratings absent any underlying change in issuer credit quality consistent with prior research we find that the recalibration allowed the clients of moody s and fitch to receive better ratings and lower yields we add to this evidence by showing that the recalibration also led to larger fees and to increases in the market shares of moody s and fitch these results are consistent with critics concerns about the effects of the issuer pay model on the credit ratings market

did tax flattening affect rrsp contributions in 1988 marginal personal income tax rates changed in canada for some individuals by reasonably substantial amounts in this note a large sample of tax filer data is examined and the conclusion is drawn that when attention is paid to the possible confounding of marginal tax rate and non linear income effects there is no convincing evidence that the tax rate changes affected contributions to registered retirement saving plans rrsps est ce que l aplatissement des taux d imposition influence les contributions au reer en 1988 les taux marginaux d imposition du revenu personnel ont change au canada et pour certaines personnes ces changements ont ete substantiels cette note examine un grand echantillon de rapports d impots et en arrive a la conclusion que quand on prend en compte le melange possible des effets du taux marginal d imposition et des effets de revenu non lineaires il n y a pas de resultats qui montrent de facon probante que les changements dans les taux d imposition ont influence les contributions au reer

credit induced boom and bust this paper exploits the federal preemption of national banks in 2004 from local laws against predatory lending to gauge the effect of the supply of credit on the real economy first the preemption regulation resulted in an 11 increase in annual lending in the 2004 2006 period which is associated with a 3 3 rise in annual house price growth rate and a 2 2 expansion of employment in nontradable sectors this was followed by a sharp decline in subsequent years furthermore we show that the increase in the supply of credit reduced delinquencies during boom years but increased them in bust years received june 7 2015 editorial decision december 22 2016 by editor robin greenwood

short term planning and the life cycle consumption puzzle abstract we develop a new life cycle consumption model where the individual has a short planning horizon standard life cycle consumers with perfect foresight and hand to mouth consumers are both special limiting cases of our model where the length of the planning horizon is set to the entire lifetime and zero respectively we derive an analytical solution to the time inconsistent short term planning problem which reveals the inner workings of the model and facilitates its use in other settings we also show that the short term planning mechanism is powerful enough to generate a consumption hump with the right size and location

the american recovery and reinvestment act solely a government jobs program abstract this paper estimates the private and government sector employment effects of american recovery and reinvestment act arra spending via an instrumental variables strategy we argue that this aid was effectively fungible and states used it to offset declines in revenue this enables us to use exogenous variation in states budget positions to identify the act s employment effects we also exploit exogenous variation across states in arra highway funding according to our benchmark estimates average state and local government employment during the 24 months following the program s inception was between 156 000 and 563 000 persons greater as a result of arra spending 90 confidence interval the corresponding estimate for the private sector ranges from a loss of 182 000 to a gain of 1 1 million jobs our point estimate for the implied cost of creating a job lasting one year is 202 000 which is substantially larger than the corresponding estimate from the president s council of economic advisors

life cycle saving insights from the perspective of bounded rationality this paper provides a new life cycle model that takes into account key elements of bounded rationality the paper shows that the model can account for patterns in the data that are hard to explain by the standard life cycle model among other patterns the model predicts that typically the young either hold no equity or their equity portfolio share is rather low and then increases over working life the analytical solution of the model demonstrates its high degree of tractability

stock market wealth and consumer spending martha starr mccluer this article investigates the effects of stock market wealth on consumer spending traditional macroeconometric models estimate that a dollar s increase in stock wealth boosts consumption by three to seven cents with the substantial 1990s rise in stock prices the nature and magnitude of this wealth effect have been much debated after describing the issues and previous research i present new evidence from a well known consumer survey the results are broadly consistent with life cycle saving and a modest wealth effect most stockholders reported no appreciable effect of stock prices on their saving or spending but many mentioned retirement saving in explaining their behavior jel e21 e30 d12 i introduction the relationship between stock market wealth and consumer spending has been a subject of long standing interest traditional macroeconometric models estimate that a dollar s increase in household wealth boosts consumer spending by three to seven cents per year such an effect is consistent with predictions from a simple life cycle model in which consumers spend more over their lifetimes in response to higher wealth however the stock market is known to play a role as a passive predictor of information thus it is also possible that stock prices simply lead aggregate economic activity without any short run change in spending induced by changes in wealth understanding the response of spending to changes in wealth is important for determining how stock market fluctuations affect the macroeconomy the question also bears directly on theories of saving behavior and on the issue of retirement preparedness by today s workers the experience of the past few years provides an interesting opportunity to revisit this issue stock prices increased substantially in the 1990s with the standard poor s 500 more than doubling from 1994 to 1997 and rising another 44 through 1999 at the same time stock ownership broadened considerably mostly through mutual funds and retirement accounts so that a large number of households likely experienced wealth gains the increase in wealth might be expected to boost consumer spending and lower the saving rate and indeed these trends occurred however it is hard to separate the influence of the wealth effect from other factors that also would have promoted spending such as strong income growth and favorable labor market conditions this article presents some new evidence on the response of spending to changes in wealth the data come from the michigan survey research center src survey of consumers an ongoing nationally representative survey of u s households in interviews conducted between july and september 1997 households owning stock were asked special questions about their spending and saving the questions covered a number of factors that may influence the effect of wealth on spending including the value and form of stockholdings stock price expectations concerns about retirement and perceptions of income uncertainty in brief the results are broadly consistent with life cycle saving and a modest wealth effect the vast majority of stockholders reported no appreciable effect of stock prices on their spending or saving but many mentioned retirement saving in explaining their behavior the next section reviews previous research on the relationship between stock market wealth and consumer spending the third section describes the data from the michigan survey and the fourth presents the results a final section summarizes and concludes ii background and previous research to frame the discussion it is useful to review how an unexpected increase in wealth would affect consumption in a simple lifecycle model this model though restrictive in its assumptions provides valuable intuition about the propensity to consume unexpected stock gains consequences of refinements to the model are discussed below

do individual retirement accounts increase savings do iras increase savings or are they merely a windfall for otherwise well off taxpayers a major objective of universal iras was to encourage saving for retirement a spirited debate has ensued over the use of ira tax deductions as a means of promoting private savings the crucial policy issue is not whether ira contributions were substantial they clearly were representing about 30 percent of personal savings from 1982 to 1986 rather the important question is the source of ira contributions iras can be financed out of 1 tax savings themselves 2 shifting existing assets into iras 3 borrowing 4 diverting new savings into iras or 5 reducing consumption the key question is how much of ira savings comes from reduced consumption for overall savings to increase private savings must increase by more than the tax savings conventional economic theory and evidence strongly suggests that iras were not effective savings incentives the challenge to this view rests largely on studies which have appealed to a variety of psychological factors not normally incorporated in economic analysis this paper reviews both types of analysis and concludes that the conventional view remains sound thus a dollar devoted to deficit reduction is likely to be a safer bet for increasing savings than a dollar devoted to ira benefits

the behavioral life cycle theory of consumer behavior survey evidence we find that survey evidence on faculty pay cycle choice strongly contradicts the neoclassical theory of consumer behavior it is more favorable to the behavioral life cycle theory of economic inquiry 26 1988 609

tractable transmission topology control using sensitivity analysis the standard economic generation dispatch ed minimizes generation costs subject to transmission constraints where the status of each line i e open or closed is fixed recent research shows that by optimally dispatching the network topology along with generation resources significant congestion costs may be avoided optimal topology control i e appropriate changes of transmission line status for real sized power networks requires the solution of a computationally intractable mixed integer linear program however it appears that much of the cost savings may be attained by changing the status of just a few lines this paper proposes tractable transmission topology control policies which employ sensitivity information readily available from the ed to select candidate lines to change status while maintaining system connectivity implementation on the ieee 118 bus test system found that our best performing policy captured an average of 96 of the potential cost savings moreover the limited computational effort required suggests that these policies could be employed in real system operations

personal and corporate saving in south africa low domestic saving rates in south africa may perpetuate a low growth trap the decline in government saving a major reason for the overall decline in saving is now being reversed however personal saving rates have fallen since 1993 and corporate rates since 199s and both may decline further with lower real interest rates it is important to understand both personal and corporate saving behavior in order to formulate policies to raise the domestic saving rate in line with the needs of economic growth this article summarizes previous work on the household sector emphasizing the role of financial liberalization assets and income expectations and explains sectoral links and policy implications further it analyzes south africa s corporate saving rate in detail models are developed both for the share of profits in national income including the roles of the terms of trade tax effects and the price to unit labor cost ratio and for the share of corporate saving in profits which is found to depend on inflation the real interest rate dividend taxation and financial liberalization corporate saving is remarkably under researched given its importance in many economies this research thus puts the saving and growth concerns of kaldor into a modern empirical context

can government purchases stimulate the economy this essay briefly reviews the state of knowledge about the government spending multiplier drawing on theoretical work aggregate empirical estimates from the united states as well as cross locality estimates i assess the likely range of multiplier values for the experiment most relevant to the stimulus package debate a temporary deficit financed increase in government purchases i conclude that the multiplier for this type of spending is probably between 0 8 and 1 5 jel e23 e62 h50

rules of thumb in life cycle saving decisions we analyse life cycle saving decisions when households use simple heuristics or rules of thumb rather than solve the underlying intertemporal optimisation problem we simulate life cycle saving decisions using three simple rules and compute utility losses relative to the solution of the optimisation problem our simulations suggest that utility losses induced by following simple decision rules are relatively low moreover the two main saving motives reflected by the canonical life cycle model long run consumption smoothing and short run insurance against income shocks can be addressed quite well by saving rules that do not require computationally demanding tasks such as backwards induction

the economic effects of public financing evidence from municipal bond ratings recalibration we show that the supply of local public financing can have important effects on local economies we identify these effects by exploiting exogenous variation on municipal bond ratings due to moody s recalibration of its scale in 2010 we find that local governments increase expenditures and employment due to an expansion of their debt capacity following an upgrade these increases in local government spending lead to multiplier effects on non tradable employment and income our findings suggest that debt financed increases in government spending can improve economic conditions during recessions

pensions and household wealth accumulation abstract economists have long suggested that higher private pension benefits crowd out other sources of household wealth accumulation we exploit detailed information on pensions and lifetime earnings for older workers in the 1992 wave of the health and retirement study and employ an instrumental variable iv identification strategy to estimate crowd out the iv estimates suggest statistically significant crowd out each dollar of pension wealth is associated with a 53 67 cent decline in nonpension wealth with less precision we use an instrumental variable quantile regression estimator and find that most of the effect is concentrated in the upper quantiles of the wealth distribution

spreading academic pay over nine or twelve months economists are supposed to know better but do they act better our article empirically considers two general hypotheses related to the literature of behavioural economics first we test the null hypothesis that individuals behave on average in a manner more consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis than with the idea of self control in the face of hyperbolic discounting in their saving decisions second along a variety of dimensions we examine whether individuals exhibit herbert simon s notion that the goal formation of individuals will differ depending upon their relative levels of experience and knowledge perhaps there are significant differences among groups in their saving decisions that depend upon their apparent levels of intelligence education and knowledge finally using a variety of individual specific control variables we test for robustness of the results

job creation in tight and slack labor markets abstract does investment create more jobs in slack than in tight labor markets we study this question using data from a photovoltaic investment scheme comparing counties with high and low unemployment over time and across space we find that 100 000 of investment created 1 2 job years in slack markets and fewer than 0 5 job years in tight markets this corresponds to labor earnings multipliers of 1 1 and below 0 5 respectively these differences are not driven by changes in investment composition capital labor substitution or regional migration consistent with crowding out as a mechanism investment leads to higher wage growth in tight than in slack markets

the employment effects of credit market disruptions firm level evidence from the 2008 9 financial crisis this article investigates the effect of bank lending frictions on employment outcomes i construct a new data set that combines information on banking relationships and employment at 2 000 nonfinancial firms during the 2008 9 crisis the article first verifies empirically the importance of banking relationships which imply a cost to borrowers who switch lenders i then use the dispersion in lender health following the lehman crisis as a source of exogenous variation in the availability of credit to borrowers i find that credit matters firms that had precrisis relationships with less healthy lenders had a lower likelihood of obtaining a loan following the lehman bankruptcy paid a higher interest rate if they did borrow and reduced employment by more compared to precrisis clients of healthier lenders consistent with frictions deriving from asymmetric information the effects vary by firm type lender health has an economically and statistically significant effect on employment at small and medium firms but the data cannot reject the hypothesis of no effect at the largest or most transparent firms abstracting from general equilibrium effects i find that the withdrawal of credit accounts for between one third and one half of the employment decline at small and medium firms in the sample in the year

the life cycle model of consumption and saving a central implication of life cycle models is that agents smooth consumption we review the empirical evidence on smoothing at frequencies from within the year up to across a lifetime we find that life cycle models particular those which incorporate realistic features of markets and goods have more empirical successes than failures we also show that some apparent deviations from theoretical predictions imply very small welfare losses for agents finally we emphasize that the coherence of life cycle models imposes an important discipline when incorporating new features into models

what accounts for the variation in retirement wealth among u s households even among households with similar socioeconomic characteristics saving and wealth vary considerably life cycle models attribute this variation to differences in time preference rates risk tolerance exposure to uncertainty relative tastes for work and leisure at advanced ages and income replacement rates these factors have testable implications concerning the relation between accumulated wealth and the shape of the consumption profile using the panel study of income dynamics and the consumer expenditure survey we find little support for these implications the data are instead consistent with rule of thumb mental accounting or hyperbolic discounting theories of wealth accumulation jel di d91 e21

earmarking and partitioning increasing saving by low income households abstract this research examines the effects of earmarking money on savings by low income consumers in particular the authors test two interventions that are designed to enhance the effects of earmarking 1 using a visual reminder of the savings goal and 2 dividing the earmarked money into two parts consistent with prior research suggesting that partitioning increases self control people save more when earmarked money is partitioned into two accounts than when it is pooled into one account in addition the presence of the visual reminder increases the savings rate the authors conclude with implications for consumer welfare and directions for further research

mafia and public spending evidence on the fiscal multiplier from a quasi experiment a law issued to combat political corruption and mafia infiltration of city councils in italy has resulted in episodes of large unanticipated temporary contractions in local public spending using these episodes as instruments we estimate the output multiplier of spending cuts at provincial level controlling for national monetary and fiscal policy and holding the tax burden of local residents constant to be 1 5 assuming that lagged spending is exogenous to current output brings the estimate of the overall multiplier up to 1 9 these results suggest that local spending adjustment may be quite consequential for local activity jel d72 e62 h71 k42 the widespread resort to fiscal stimulus at the onset of the global crisis and more recently the emerging need to consolidate deficits in response to rising fiscal imbalances have revitalized the empirical debate on the transmission of fiscal policy the multiplier while the literature has mostly focused on aggregate effects at a national level several recent contributions reviewed below have called attention to the local dimension this shift in focus is motivated by specific policy questions combined with the opportunity to exploit institutional information to address econometric issues in identification 1

smart flexible just in time transmission and flowgate bidding there is currently a national push to create a smarter grid currently the full control of transmission assets is not built in network optimization models with more sophisticated modeling of transmission assets it is possible to better utilize the current infrastructure to improve the social welfare co optimizing the generation with the network topology has been shown to reduce the total dispatch cost in this paper we propose the concept of just in time transmission this concept is predicated on the fact that transmission that is a detriment to network efficiency can be kept offline when not needed and with the proper smart grid advanced technology can be switched back into service once there is a disturbance we determine which lines to have offline based on the optimal transmission switching model previously proposed a secondary topic of this paper focuses on flowgate bidding approved by the federal energy regulatory commission and implemented within the spp and nyiso networks flowgate bidding is defined as allowing a line s flow to exceed its rated capacity for a short period of time for a set penalty i e price we demonstrate the effectiveness of these models by testing them on large scale iso network models

iras and household saving this paper examines the effects of individual retirement accounts iras on private and national saving the authors construct a formal model of dynamic utility maximization that generates closed form equations for ira and other saving their empirical estimates indicate that raising the annual ira contribution limit between 1983 and 1986 would have resulted in little if any increase in national saving results from sensitivity analysis imply substantially smaller effects on national saving than most previous researchers have estimated the authors results are consistent with new evidence they present indicating considerable potential among ira holders to shift taxable forms of saving into iras copyright 1994 by american economic association

congestion management through topological corrections a case study of central western europe the integration of an increasing amount of renewable generation within europe is posing operational challenges that require various balancing actions system operators therefore need to rely increasingly on the active control of the transmission network transmission topology control is a fast and economical option to add flexibility to the transmission system we model the current methodology for controlling congestion in the central western european cwe market and quantify the benefits of topology control we also compare the results with a nodal pricing model our computational results suggest that topology control can significantly reduce congestion management costs under the current market coupling regime whereas the benefits of topology control are limited under nodal pricing topology control emerges as an attractive and implementable means of managing congestion as it provides a significant percentage of the cost savings that would be achieved by overhauling the existing european market design and shifting to a nodal pricing regime

the effects of fiscal stimulus evidence from the 2009 cash for clunkers program we evaluate the impact of the 2009 cash for clunkers program on short and medium run auto purchases our empirical strategy exploits variation across u s cities in ex ante exposure to the program as measured by the number of clunkers in the city as of summer 2008 we find that the program induced the purchase of an additional 370 000 cars in july and august 2009 however we find strong evidence of reversal high clunker counties bought fewer autos in the 10 months after the program expired which offset most of the initial purchases we find no evidence of an effect on employment house prices or household default rates in cities with higher exposure to the program jel codes h20 e62 copyright 2012 oxford university press

knowledge information and retirement saving decisions evidence from a large scale intervention in chile all over the world retirement income depends increasingly on individuals savings choices over their lifetime while government sponsored retirement schemes like the u s social security system provide a reasonable stream of resources for old age middle and high income workers are expected to make their own additional savings arrangements either through employer sponsored pension plans matching contribution schemes such as the 401 k plans in the united states or individual savings through tax favored investment vehicles 1to adequately plan for retirement individuals need information about their current situation the different choices available to them and some minimal mathematical and abstraction capabilities to properly process this information there is growing concern however regarding the low level of financial literacy among the general population the baby boomer generation does not seem to have accumulated sufficient financial wealth beyond housing with particularly low asset levels for female headed households 2 even if the lack of financial sophistication could be overcome by the use of retirement planning services the existing evidence suggests that these services are rarely sought and when they are it is mostly by individuals with initially higher levels of financial literacy 3 furthermore individuals with less exposure to financial planning tend to make wrong choices saving less than required in poorly diversified portfolios or not profiting from tax favored instruments 4in a defined contribution scheme the level of the benefit is not known beforehand and individuals face uncertainty about how their current savings will translate into future benefits in this setting one key piece of information that individuals need to make active decisions to improve their retirement wealth is the pension level they are expected to receive given their current financial wealth and their historical saving behavior assuming that individuals can reasonably form an expectation of the income level they would like to receive in old age the comparison between desired and projected income could induce them to save more transfer their wealth into more conservative or aggressive portfolios postpone retirement or seek retirement planning advice while it is always possible to make these adjustments the effectiveness of these choices depends on the time horizon until retirement while small changes when one is young can have a large impact on retirement individuals with low asset levels can do little to improve their situation as they approach retirement age except perhaps postpone their exit from the labor force in this article we exploit a large scale natural experiment to analyze the impact of a personalized pension projection ppp which was sent to practically all chilean active dependent workers in july 2005 on their retirement saving behavior the objective of this intervention was to simplify the information received by pension system members to help them make better decisions in essence we compare the saving behavior of individuals during the first twelve months after they received the ppp with that of comparable individuals who were not sent this statement due to some specific administrative rules we use this analysis to address two different issues first if individuals were well aware of their current financial stance receipt of this information should have no effect on their retirement related saving behavior our analysis serves as a test of the full information hypothesis second the large scope of the intervention allows us to look at different subgroups of the population as mentioned above the age dimension is particularly important since the possibility of correcting misalignments between expectations and projections depends crucially on the time horizon until retirement the gender dimension is also important for the chilean case as the actuarial nature of the chilean pension system tends to directly translate gender differences in the labor market into differences in their old age income chilean women tend to work less frequently receive lower wages for a comparable job retire earlier and live longer

the effects of tax based saving incentives on government revenue and national saving this paper shows that previous analyses of ira type plans that seek to encourage household saving have miscalculated their effect on tax revenue and therefore on national saving by ignoring their favorable impact on corporate tax payments recognizing the important effects of ira plans on corporate tax revenue changes previous conclusions about the revenue loss in a fundamental way the revenue loss associated with iras either is much smaller than has generally been estimated or is actually a revenue gain

assessing the effectiveness of saving incentives concluding that iras and 401 k s do increase saving this text provides a fresh cost benefit approach for analyzing the success of savings incentives it compares the new savings to the government tax revenue lost through contributions to iras and 401 k s

does the source of capital affect capital structure prior work on leverage implicitly assumes capital availability depends solely on firm characteristics however market frictions that make capital structure relevant may also be associated with a firm s source of capital examining this intuition we find firms that have access to the public bond markets as measured by having a debt rating have significantly more leverage although firms with a rating are fundamentally different these differences do not explain our findings even after controlling for firm characteristics that determine observed capital structure and instrumenting for the possible endogeneity of having a rating firms with access have 35 more debt copyright 2006 oxford university press

active vs passive decisions and crowd out in retirement savings accounts evidence from denmark using 41 million observations on savings for the population of denmark we show that the effects of retirement savings policies on wealth accumulation depend on whether they change savings rates by active or passive choice subsidies for retirement accounts which rely on individuals to take an action to raise savings primarily induce individuals to shift assets from taxable accounts to retirement accounts we estimate that each 1 of government expenditure on subsidies increases total saving by only 1 cent in contrast policies that raise retirement contributions if individuals take no action such as automatic employer contributions to retirement accounts increase wealth accumulation substantially we estimate that approximately 15 of individuals are active savers who respond to tax subsidies primarily by shifting assets across accounts 85 of individuals are passive savers who are unresponsive to subsidies but are instead heavily influenced by automatic contributions made on their behalf active savers tend to be wealthier and more financially sophisticated we conclude that automatic contributions are more effective at increasing savings rates than subsidies for three reasons i subsidies induce relatively few individuals to respond ii they generate substantial crowd out conditional on response and iii they do not increase the savings of passive individuals who are least prepared for retirement jel codes h2 h3

the effect of individual retirement accounts on household consumption and national saving a major debate exists on whether expanding tax favoured savings accounts such as individual retirement accounts iras will increase national savings much of the empirical debate has centred on whether ira contributions before the tax reform act of 1986 represented new savings or merely reshuffled assets we find no evidence that households financed their ira contributions from reductions in consumption at least initially we find evidence that households financed their ira contributions from existing savings or from saving that would have been done anyway our results indicate that at most 9 of ira contributions represented net additions to national saving

the asset allocation decision and investor heterogeneity a puzzle abstract this paper examines portfolio allocation decisions for a large sample of demographically diverse survey respondents in light of finance theory and the recommendations of financial advisors we investigate whether asset allocation decisions vary for respondents who differ across several dimensions including gender home ownership age net worth and psychological orientation sample respondents decisions are consistent with popular advice and finance theory we find that only age affects the mix of risky securities when we consider the allocation of total portfolio assets to equity all individual characteristics except age matter psychological orientation contributes to our ability to explain asset allocation decisions

firm leverage consumer demand and employment losses during the great recession this article argues that firms balance sheets were instrumental in the transmission of consumer demand shocks during the great recession using micro level data from the u s census bureau we find that establishments of more highly levered firms experienced significantly larger employment losses in response to declines in local consumer demand these results are not driven by firms being less productive having expanded too much prior to the great recession or being generally more sensitive to fluctuations in either aggregate employment or house prices likewise at the county level we find that counties with more highly levered firms experienced significantly larger declines in employment in response to local consumer demand shocks accordingly firms balance sheets also matter for aggregate employment our results suggest a possible role for employment policies that target firms directly besides conventional stimulus