Precautionary saving and the marginal propensity to consume out of permanent income

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Carroll, Christopher D.
• 署名单位: Johns Hopkins University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2009.06.016
• 发表日期: 2009
• 页码: 780-790
• 关键词: risk; uncertainty; consumption; precautionary saving; Buffer-stock saving; permanent income hypothesis

摘要

The budget constraint requires that, eventually, consumption must adjust fully to any permanent shock to income. Intuition suggests that, knowing this, optimizing agents will fully adjust their spending immediately upon experiencing a permanent shock. However, this paper shows that if consumers are impatient and are subject to transitory as well as permanent shocks, the optimal marginal propensity to consume out of permanent shocks (the MPCP) is strictly less than one, because buffer-stock savers have a target wealth-to-permanent-income ratio: a positive shock to permanent income moves the ratio below its target, temporarily boosting saving. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.