Aggregate Consumption and Debt Accumulation: An Empirical Examination of US Household Behavior

Trinity College Department of Economics Working Paper No. 12-04

54 Pages Posted: 27 Jun 2012

See all articles by Yun Kim

Yun Kim

Trinity College (Hartford CT)

Mark Setterfield

New School for Social Research

Yuan Mei

Trinity College (Hartford CT) - Department of Economics

Date Written: June 27, 2012

Abstract

The outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 witnessed a marked contraction in US consumption spending that had hitherto been boosted by historically high levels of household debt-financing. These events question the validity of conventional models of consumption based on the life-cycle hypothesis, with its benign view of debt as a neutral instrument of optimal intertemporal expenditure smoothing. This paper develops an alternative account of consumption spending based on the Keynesian relative income hypothesis, which claims that current income, its distribution, household borrowing, and household indebtedness all affect current consumption. The paper then provides an empirical investigation of US consumption spending since the 1960s. The results of this inquiry are not compatible with the life-cycle hypothesis, but are congruent with our alternative Keynesian theory of consumption based on the relative income hypothesis.

Keywords: Consumption, household borrowing, household debt, life cycle hypothesis, relative income hypothesis

JEL Classification: E12, E21

Suggested Citation

Kim, Yun and Setterfield, Mark and Mei, Yuan, Aggregate Consumption and Debt Accumulation: An Empirical Examination of US Household Behavior (June 27, 2012). Trinity College Department of Economics Working Paper No. 12-04, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2094703 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2094703

Yun Kim

Trinity College (Hartford CT) ( email )

300 Summit Street
Hartford, CT 06106
United States

Mark Setterfield (Contact Author)

New School for Social Research ( email )

6 East 16th Street
New York, NY 10003
United States

Yuan Mei

Trinity College (Hartford CT) - Department of Economics ( email )

United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
96
Abstract Views
950
Rank
490,342
PlumX Metrics