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

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Monetary Economics
Year: 2009
Volume: 56
Issue: 6
Pages: 780-790

Score contribution per author:

4.022 = (α=2.01 / 1 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

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.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:moneco:v:56:y:2009:i:6:p:780-790
Journal Field
Macro
Author Count
1
Added to Database
2026-01-25