Intrahousehold Disagreement about Macroeconomic Expectations

Journal of Finance, Forthcoming

92 Pages Posted: 7 Nov 2023 Last revised: 27 Mar 2024

See all articles by Da Ke

Da Ke

University of South Carolina - Department of Finance

Date Written: October 9, 2023

Abstract

This paper highlights the simple fact that households typically consist of multiple members who may hold divergent views, a fact that existing approaches to measuring and modeling household macroeconomic expectations largely abstract from. Using unique data on macroeconomic expectations of both spouses, I document substantial intrahousehold disagreement about inflation, economic recessions, and stock market returns. I further show that household asset allocation decisions are shaped by disagreement between spouses about future stock returns, and a pre-registered randomized survey experiment confirms the causal impact of such disagreement on portfolio choice. Additional investigation reveals the central role played by information at the belief aggregation stage of the decision-making process between spouses with heterogeneous beliefs.

Keywords: macroeconomic expectations, intrahousehold financial decision-making, randomized survey experiment, information acquisition

JEL Classification: D14, D83, D84, G11

Suggested Citation

Ke, Da, Intrahousehold Disagreement about Macroeconomic Expectations (October 9, 2023). Journal of Finance, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4597312 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4597312

Da Ke (Contact Author)

University of South Carolina - Department of Finance ( email )

1014 Greene Street
Columbia, SC 29208
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.dakefinance.com

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