For many helpful comments, we thank (2007)
Sydney Ludvigson, Alexander Michaelides, Orazio Attanasio, Dave Backus, Ben Bernanke, John Y. Campbell, ...
cations of Buffer Stock Saving Behavior. � Updated versions of this paper may be found at
Intertemporal Choice and the Cross Sectional Variance of Marginal Utility (2007)
Orazio Attanasio And, Orazio Attanasio, Orazio Attanasio
The theory of intertemporal choice predicts that the cross-sectional variance of the marginal utility of consumption is equal to its own lag plus a constant and a random component. Using general...
Consumption, house prices and expectations (2005)
Orazio Attanasio, Laura Blow, Robert Hamilton, Andrew Leicester, Orazio Attanasio, Laura Blow, ...
The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and not necessarily those of the Bank of England. We would like to thank Peter Andrews, Ian Bond, Neal Hatch, Simon Price, Gabriel Sterne,...
Explaining Changes in Female Labour Supply in a Life-cycle Model (2004)
Attanasio, Orazio, Low, Hamish W., Sanchez-Marcos, Virginia
We study the life cycle labour force participation of three cohorts of American women: those born in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. We document the large shifts in labour supply behaviour among these...
NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE CORRELATION OF WEALTH ACROSS GENERATIONS (2002)
Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst, Orazio Attanasio, Rebecca Blank, John Bound, ...
We thank Heidi Shierholz for excellent research assistance and participants at the NBER 2000
In this paper we study the eects of certain types of public compulsory insurance arrangements for aggregate shocks on private allocations in environments with limited commitment. We show that this...
In this paper we study the effects of certain types of public compulsory insurance arrangements for aggregate shocks on private allocations in environments with limited commitment. We show that this...
Consumption Smoothing in Island Economies: Can Public Insurance Reduce Welfare? (1999)
In this paper we study the e#ects of certain types of public compulsory insurance arrangements for aggregate shocks on private allocations in environments with limited commitment. We show that this...
How far can shoe-leather go in explaining the welfare cost of inflation? Using a unique set of microeconomic data on households, we estimate the parameters of the demand for money derived from a...
From wages to consumption inequality: tracking shocks
Orazio Attanasio, Gabriella Berloffa, Richard Blundell, Stephen Redding
Forthcoming
Relative Wage Movements and the Distribution of Consumption.
Attanasio, Orazio, Davis, Steven J
The authors analyze how relative wage movements among birth cohorts and education groups affected the distribution of household consumption and economic welfare. Their empirical work draws on the...
Humps and bumps in lifetime consumption
Orazio Attanasio, James Banks, Costas Meghir, Guglielmo Weber
There is much debate over whether the life-cycle model of consumption can explain consumption growth patterns patterns observed in household level data sources. We argue that once one departs from...
Orazio Attanasio, Emla Fitzsimons, Ana Gomez, Diana Lopez, Costas Meghir, Alice Mesnard
This research is part of a large evaluation effort, undertaken by a consortium formed by IFS, Econometria and SEI, which has considered the effects of Familias en Acción on a variety of outcomes one...
Booms and busts: consumption, house prices and expectations
Orazio Attanasio, Laura Blow, Robert Hamilton, Andrew Leicester
Over much of the past 25 years, the cycles of house price and consumption growth have been closely synchronised. Three main hypotheses for this co-movement have been proposed in the literature....
What Really Happened to Consumption Inequality in the US?
Orazio Attanasio, Erich Battistin, Hidehiko Ichimura
This paper considers data quality issues for the analysis of consumption inequality exploiting two complementary datasets from the Consumer Expenditure Survey for the United States. The Interview...
Consumption, house prices and expectations
Orazio Attanasio, Laura Blow, Robert Hamilton, Andrew Leicester
Over much of the past 25 years, the cycles of house price and consumption growth have been closely synchronised. Three main hypotheses for this co-movement have been proposed in the literature....
In this paper we consider conditions under which the estimation of a log-linearized Euler equation for consumption yields consistent estimates of preference parameters. When utility is isoelastic and...
Orazio Attanasio, James Banks, Matthew Wakefield
The adequacy of household saving for retirement has become a policy issue all around the world. The UK and US have been in the vanguard of those countries that have tried to encourage retirement...
Tests of Income Pooling in Household Decisions
Valerie Lechene, Orazio Attanasio
Using the Progresa data from Mexico, we investigate intra-household decision making using a variety of outcomes. We exploit both the experimental nature and the (short) panel dimension of the data to...
Attanasio, Orazio, Fitzsimons, Emla, Gomez, Ana, Lopez, Diana, Meghir, Costas, Mesnard, Alice
The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer programme implemented in rural areas in Colombia in 2002, on school enrolment and child labour. Using a...
Stochastic Components of Individual Consumption: A Time Series Analysis of Grouped Data
Orazio Attanasio, Margherita Borella
In this paper we propose a method to characterize the time series properties of individual consumption, income and interest rates using micro data, as studies in labour economics have characterized...
Female Labor Supply As Insurance Against Idiosyncratic Risk
Orazio Attanasio, Hamish Low, Virginia Sánchez-Marcos
In this paper, we explore the role of female labor supply as an insurance mechanism against idiosyncratic earnings risk within the family. We use a life-cycle model in which a unitary family makes...
Estimating ATT Effects with Non-Experimental Data and Low Compliance
Manuela Angelucci, Orazio Attanasio
In this paper we discuss several methodological issues related to the identification and estimation of Average Treatment on the Treated (ATT) effects in the presence of low compliance. We consider...
Explaining Life-Cycle Profiles of Home-Ownership and Labour Supply
Renata Bottazzi, Orazio Attanasio, Hamish Low, Lars Nesheim, Matthew Wakefield
In this paper we show the extent that home ownership varies over the life-cycle and differs by cohort and by education. We explain these differences in a calibrated model of life-cycle behaviour...
Testing Private Information Models with Asset Accumulation
Orazio Attanasio, Nicola Pavoni
The complete insurance hypothesis is soundly rejected by the data (e.g. Attanasio and Davis, 1996). On the other hand, the permanent income model assumes that the only mechanism available to the...
Explaining Changes in Female Labour Supply in a Life-Cycle Model
Virginia Sanchez-Marcos, Orazio Attanasio, Hamish Low
Female labour force participation and labour supply, in the US, as in many other developed countries, has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. If one compares cohorts of women born in the...
Consumption, Product Growth and the Interest Rate
Attanasio, Orazio, Weber, Guglielmo
In this paper we present empirical evidence of the importance of aggregation bias in Euler equations for consumption. The main result is that estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution...
Estimating Euler Equations with Noisy Data: Two Exact GMM Estimators
Sule Alan, Orazio Attanasio, Martin Browning
In this paper we exploit the specific structure of the Euler equation and develop two alternative GMM estimators that deal explicitly with measurement error. The first estimator assumes that the...
Estimating Euler Equations with Noisy Data: Two Exact GMM Estimators
Sule Alan, Orazio Attanasio, Martin Browning
In this paper we exploit the specific structure of the Euler equation and develop two alternative GMM estimators that deal explicitly with measurement error. The first estimator assumes that the...
From Earnings Inequality to Consumption Inequality
Orazio Attanasio, Gabriella Berloffa, Richard Blundell, Ian Preston
This paper studies the paths from inequality in earnings to inequality in household consumption. We show that careful study of the evolution of the variances and covariances of earnings and...
Consumption and saving behaviour: modelling recent trends
This paper illustrates recent trends in household consumption and personal savings in the UK and the US and discusses some theoretical models that can be used to interpret them. The trends in these...
Orazio Attanasio, Emla Fitzsimons, Ana Gomez, Diana Lopez, Costas Meghir, Alice Mesnard
The paper studies the effects of Familias en Acción, a conditional cash transfer programme implemented in rural areas in Colombia in 2002, on school enrolment and child labour. Using a...
Differential mortality in the UK
Orazio Attanasio, Carl Emmerson
In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/89 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socio-economic status and health outcomes. We find that, even after...
Trends in household saving: a tale of two countries
In this paper we argue that only when one uses data and arguments relating to the life-time experiences of individuals or households within an economy can one understand recent trends and patterns in...
Child health in rural Colombia: determinants and policy interventions
Attanasio, Orazio, Gomez, Luis Carlos, Rojas, Ana Gomez, Vera-Hernandez, Marcos
Trends in household saving don't justify tax incentives to boost saving
"Despite diverse trends in household saving in OECD countries, many governments are introducing tax incentives designed to boost saving by particular groups. Such schemes have been justified by many...
Tests of Income Pooling in Household Decisions
Orazio Attanasio, Valérie Lechene
Using the Progresa data from Mexico, we investigate intrahousehold decision making using a variety of outcomes. We exploit both the experimental nature and the (short) panel dimension of the data to...
The Impact of a Conditional Cash Transfer Programme on Consumption in Colombia
Orazio Attanasio, Alice Mesnard
This paper studies the impact of a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia on the total consumption of very poor households and on its components. Our evaluation methodology involves...
Pension wealth and household saving: evidence from pension reforms in the UK
Orazio Attanasio, Susanne Rohwedder
Using three major UK pension reforms as natural experiments we investigate the relationship between pension saving and discretionary private savings. Unlike most differences-in -differences...
Asset holding and consumption volatility
Orazio Attanasio, James Banks, Sarah Tanner
Recent studies have explored the possibility that limited participation in asset markets, and the stock market in particular, might explain the lack of correspondence between the sample moments of...
Attanasio, Orazio, Guiso, Luigi, Jappelli, Tullio
How far can shoe-leather go in explaining the welfare cost of inflation? Using a unique set of microeconomic data on households, we estimate the parameters of the demand for money derived from a...
Trade Reforms and Wage Inequality in Colombia
Attanasio, Orazio, Goldberg, Pinelopi, Pavcnik, Nina
We investigate the effects of the drastic tariff reductions of the 1980s and 1990s in Colombia on the wage distribution. We identify three main channels through which the wage distribution was...
Quantifying the Effects of the Demographic Transition in Developing Economies
Orazio Attanasio, Sagiri Kitao, Giovanni L. Violante
This paper evaluates quantitatively the impact of the observed demographic transition on aggregate variables (factor prices, saving rate, output growth), and on inter-generational welfare in...
Explaining Changes in Female Labor Supply in a Life-Cycle Model
Orazio Attanasio, Hamish Low, Virginia Sanchez-Marcos
This paper studies the life-cycle labor supply of three cohorts of American women, born in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. We focus on the increase in labor supply of mothers between the 1940s and 1950s...
Relative Wage Movements and the Distribution of Consumption
Orazio Attanasio, Steven J. Davis
We analyze how relative wage movements across birth cohorts and education groups during the 1980s affected the distribution of household consumption. The analysis integrates the labor economics...
Asset Holding and Consumption Volatility
Orazio Attanasio, James Banks, Sarah Tanner
Recent studies have explored the possibility that limited participation in asset markets, and the stock market in particular, might explain the lack of correspondence between the sample moments of...
Orazio Attanasio, Luigi Guiso, Tuillo Jappelli
How far can shoe-leather go in explaining the welfare cost of inflation? Using a unique set of microeconomic data on households, we estimate the parameters of the demand for money derived from the...
Credit Constraints in the Market for Consumer Durables: Evidence from Micro Data on Car Loans
Orazio Attanasio, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Ekaterini Kyriazidou
We investigate the empirical significance of borrowing constraints in the market for consumer loans. We set up a theoretical model of consumer loan demand, which in the presence of credit rationing...
Trade Reforms and Wage Inequiality in Colombia
Orazio Attanasio, Pinelopi Goldberg, Nina Pavcnik
We investigate the effects of the drastic tariff reductions of the 1980s and 1990s in Colombia on the wage distribution. We identify three main channels through which the wage distribution was...
Orazio Attanasio, Nicola Pavoni
We derive testable implications of model in which first best allocations are not achieved because of a moral hazard problem with hidden saving. We show that in this environment agents typically...
Training Disadvantaged Youth in Latin America: Evidence from a Randomized Trial
Orazio Attanasio, Adriana Kugler, Costas Meghir
Youth unemployment in Latin America is exceptionally high, as much as 50% among the poor. Vocational training may be the best chance to help unemployed young people at the bottom of the income...
Orazio Attanasio, Luigi Guiso, Tullio Jappelli
How far can shoe-leather go in explaining the welfare cost of inflation? Using a unique set of microeconomic data on households, we estimate the parameters of the demand for money derived from a...
Intertemporal Choice and the Cross Sectional Variance of Marginal Utility
Orazio Attanasio, Tullio Jappelli
The theory of intertemporal choice predicts that the cross-sectional variance of the marginal utility of consumption is equal to its own lag plus a constant and a random component. Using general...
Oportunidades: Program Effect on Consumption, Low Participation, and Methodological Issues
Manuela Angelucci, Orazio Attanasio
In this paper we estimate the effect of the Mexican conditional cash transfer program, Oportunidades, on consumption, and we explore some issues related to participation in the program and to the...
Orazio Attanasio, Nicola Pavoni
We study testable implications for the dynamics of consumption and income of models in which first best allocations are not achieved because of a moral hazard problem with hidden saving. We show that...
Food and Cash Transfers: Evidence from Colombia
Attanasio, Orazio, Battistin, Erich, Mesnard, Alice
We study food Engel curves among the poor population targeted by a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia. After controlling for the endogeneity of total expenditure and for the (unobserved)...
Educational Choices, Subjective Expectations, and Credit Constraints
Orazio Attanasio, Katja Kaufmann
In this paper we analyze the link between people's "subjective" expectations of returns to schooling and their decision to invest into schooling. We use data from a household survey on Mexican junior...
Attanasio, Orazio, Kugler, Adriana, Meghir, Costas
This paper evaluates the impact of a randomized training program for disadvantaged youth introduced in Colombia in 2005. This randomized trial offers a unique opportunity to examine the impact of...
Food and cash transfers: evidence from Colombia
Orazio Attanasio, Erich Battistin, Alice Mesnard
We study food Engel curves among the poor population targeted by a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia. After controlling for the endogeneity of total expenditure and for the (unobserved)...
Mexico in the 1990s: the Main Cross-Sectional Facts
Orazio Attanasio, Chiara Binelli
This paper describes the main cross-sectional facts on individual and household earnings, labor supply, income, consumption and wealth in Mexico in the decade of the 1990s. We use two different data...
Oportunidades: Program Effect on Consumption, Low Participation, and Methodological Issues
Angelucci, Manuela, Attanasio, Orazio
In this paper we estimate the effect of the Mexican conditional cash transfer program, Oportunidades, on consumption, and we explore some issues related to participation to the program and to the...