Orazio P. Attanasio

Household Savings and Income Distribution in Mexico By (2007)

Documento De Trabajo, Orazio P. Attanasio, Miguel Székely

* University College London, Institute of Fiscal Studies and NBER, and Inter American Development Bank, respectively. This paper was prepared for presentation at the Conference on “Perspectivas del...

July 2000 Consumption Smoothing and Extended Families (2007)

Orazio P. Attanasio, Mark Rosenzweig, Chris Udry, Tilman Borgers, Matthew Jackson, John Moore, ...

In this paper we look at various issues pertaining the smoothing of consumption in village economies (small agricultural societies). We discuss how consumption smothing is possible despite the lack...

Using randomized experiments and structural models for 'scaling up'. Evidence from the PROGRESA evaluation.* (2007)

Orazio P. Attanasio, Costas Meghiriand, Miguel Szekely

The evaluation of welfare programs and more generally government or international organisms interventions is often posed as a one off question, in that evaluators ask whether a specific intervention...

Abstract (2007)

Orazio P. Attanasio, Giovanni L. Violante

This paper constructs a general equilibrium overlapping generation model to evaluate quantitatively how a demographic transition (falling mortality and fertility rates) a ects aggregate variables...

December 2000 Consumption Smoothing and Extended Families (2007)

Orazio P. Attanasio, Tim Worrall, Mark Rosenzweig, Chris Udry, Tilman Borgers, Matthew Jackson, ...

In this paper we look at various issues pertaining the smoothing of consumption in village economies (small agricultural societies). We discuss how consumption smothing is possible despite the lack...

Quantifying the Effects of the Demographic Transition in Developing Economies (2006)

Attanasio, Orazio P., Kitao, Sagiri, Violante, Giovanni L.

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...

Quantifying the Effects of the Demographic Transition in Developing Economies (2006)

Attanasio, Orazio P., Kitao, Sagiri, Violante, Giovanni L.

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...

Quantifying the Effects of the Demographic Transition in Developing Economies (2006)

Attanasio, Orazio P., Kitao, Sagiri, Violante, Giovanni L.

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...

Quantifying the Effects of the Demographic Transition in Developing Economies (2006)

Attanasio, Orazio P., Kitao, Sagiri, Violante, Giovanni L.

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...

Booms and Busts: Consumption, house prices and expectations (2005)

Orazio P. Attanasio, Laura Blow, Robert Hamilton, Andrew Leicester, Orazio P. Attanasio, Laura Blow, ...

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....

L'efficacité des avantages fiscaux pour accroître l'épargne (retraite): éléments théoriques et empiriques (2004)

Attanasio, Orazio P., Banks, James, Wakefield, Matthew

Partout dans le monde se pose la question des mesures à prendre pour assurer un niveau suffisant d¿épargne retraite des ménages. Les États-Unis et le Royaume-Uni ont été à l¿avant-garde des...

The Demand for money, financial innovation, and the welfare cost of inflation: an analysis with household data (2002)

Attanasio, Orazio P., Guiso, Luigi, Japelli, Tullio

We use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized Baumol-Tobin model. Our data set contains information on average currency,...

Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey.

Attanasio, Orazio P, Weber, Guglielmo

In this paper, the authors show that some of the predictions of models of consumer intertemporal optimization are in line with the patterns of nondurable expenditure observed in U.S. household-level...

Estimating Euler Equations

Orazio P. Attanasio, Hamish Low

In this paper we consider conditions under which the estimation of a log-linearized Euler equation for consumption yields consistent estimates of the preference parameters. When utility is isoelastic...

The Demand for Money, Financial Innovation, and the Welfare Cost of Inflation: An Analysis with Household Data

Orazio P. Attanasio, Luigi Guiso, Tullio Jappelli

We use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized Baumol-Tobin model. Our data set contains information on average currency,...

Asset Holding and Consumption Volatility

Orazio P. Attanasio, James Banks, Sarah Tanner

We investigate 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 the...

Consumption over the Life Cycle and over the Business Cycle

Orazio P. Attanasio, Martin Browning

The main aim of this paper is to assess the validity of the life cycle model of consumption. In particular, we address an issue that has recently received much attention, especially in the...

Intertemporal Consumption Choices, Transaction Costs and Limited Participation to Financial Markets: Reconciling Data and Theory

Orazio P. Attanasio, Monica Paiella

This paper builds a unifying framework that, within the theory of intertemporal consumption choices, brings together the limited participation -based explanation of the poor empirical performance of...

Mortality, Health Status, and Wealth

Orazio P. Attanasio, Carl Emmerson

In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/1989 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes. We find that, even after...

Pension Wealth and Household Saving: Evidence from Pension Reforms in the United Kingdom

Orazio P. Attanasio, Susann Rohwedder

Using three major U.K. pension reforms as natural experiments we investigate the relationship between pension saving and discretionary private savings. Unlike most differences-in-differences...

Consumption over the Life Cycle and over the Business Cycle.

Attanasio, Orazio P, Browning, Martin

The authors assess the empirical validity of the life-cycle model using a time series of cross sections and a novel parametrization of preferences. The main findings are as follows: the excess...

Limited Commitment and Crowding out of Private Transfers: Evidence from a Randomised Experiment

Pedro Albarran, Orazio P. Attanasio

This paper studies some empirical implications of models with limited risk sharing due to the imperfect enforceability of contracts. We test whether the amount by which public transfers reduce...

The Effect Of Individual Retirement Accounts On Household Consumption And National Saving

Orazio P. Attanasio, Thomas DeLeire

A major debate exists on whether expanding tax--favoured savings accounts such as Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) will increase national savings. Much of the empirical debate has centred on...

The life cycle hypothesis and consumption inequality

Orazio P. Attanasio, Tullio Jappelli

The life-cycle hypothesis 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 fairly general...

On the Aggregation of Euler Equations for Consumption in Simple Overlapping-Generations Models.

Attanasio, Orazio P, Weber, Guglielmo

If consumers have finite lives, the aggregate consumption growth equation is affected by entries and exits (births and deaths). The authors use two- and three-period overlapping-generations models to...

Consumption

Attanasio, Orazio P., J. B. Taylor, M. Woodford

Consumption is the largest component of GDP. Since the 1950s, the life cycle and the permanent income models have constituted the main analytical tools to the study of consumption behaviour, both at...

Intertemporal Consumption Choices, Transaction Costs and Limited Participation in Financial Markets: Reconciling Data and Theory.

Orazio P. Attanasio, Monica Paiella

This paper builds a unifying framework based on the theory of intertemporal consumption choices that brings together the limited participation-based explanation of the C-CAPM poor empirical...

Consumption Growth, the Interest Rate and Aggregation.

Attanasio, Orazio P, Weber, Guglielmo

In this paper, the authors present empirical evidence on aggregation problems with Euler equations for consumption. Their main results are that the estimates of the elasticity of intertemporal...

Risk, Time-Varying Second Moments and Market Efficiency.

Attanasio, Orazio P

This paper addresses two topics. First, it nests the consumption and static capital asset pricing model in a unified framework. Second, it tests for market efficiency. The first test is based on the...

The UK Consumption Boom of the Late 1980s: Aggregate Implications of Microeconomic Evidence.

Attanasio, Orazio P, Weber, Guglielmo

Two competing explanations of the UK consumer boom in the late 1980s are the financial liberalization-imperfect housing market hypothesis of Muellbauer and Murphy and the hypothesis of King. We use...

Intertemporal Substitution, Risk Aversion and the Euler Equation for Consumption.

Attanasio, Orazio P, Weber, Guglielmo

This paper investigates the empirical performance of intertemporal optimization models that relax the restriction imposed by expected utility that risk aversion and intertemporal substitution are...

Social Security And Households' Saving

Orazio P. Attanasio, Agar Brugiavini

This paper provides new evidence on the substitutability between private and pension wealth by exploiting the Italian pension reform of 1992. We use a difference-in-difference estimator that exploits...

Intertemporal Choice And The Cross-Sectional Variance Of Marginal Utility

Orazio P. Attanasio, Tullio Jappelli

The theory of intertemporal choice predicts that the crosssectional variance of the marginal utility of consumption is equal to its own lag plus a constant and a random component. Using general...

Saving, Growth, and Investment: A Macroeconomic Analysis Using a Panel of Countries

Orazio P. Attanasio, Lucio Picci, Antonello E. Scorcu

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the long- and short-run correlations among saving, investment, and growth rates for 123 countries over the period 1961-94. Three results are robust...

Intertemporal Consumption Choices, Transaction Costs and Limited Participation in Financial Markets: Reconciling Data and Theory

Orazio P. Attanasio, Monica Paiella

This paper builds a unifying framework based on the theory of intertemporal consumption choices that brings together the limited participation-based explanation of the C-CAPM poor empirical per-...

CREDIT CONSTRAINTS IN THE MARKET FOR CONSUMER DURABLES: EVIDENCE FROM MICRO DATA ON CAR LOANS

Orazio P. Attanasio, Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, Ekaterini Kyriazidou

We investigate the significance of borrowing constraints in the market for consumer loans. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey on auto loan contracts we estimate the elasticities of loan...

A Cohort Analysis of Saving Behavior by U.S. Households

Orazio P. Attanasio

In this paper I analyze the pattern of saving behavior by U.S. households, using the Consumer Expenditure (CEX) Survey. The analysis' main goal is to explain the decline in aggregate personal saving...

Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey

Orazio P. Attanasio, Guglielmo Weber

In this paper we show that some of the predictions of models of consumer intertemporal optimization are not inconsistent with the patterns of non-durable expenditure observed in US household-level...

The Intertemporal Allocation of Consumption: Theory and Evidence

Orazio P. Attanasio

Liquidity constraints and, more generally, imperfections in credit markets, can be extremely important for the intertemporal allocation of consumption and have received a substantial amount of...

IRAs and Household Saving Revisited: Some New Evidence

Orazio P. Attanasio, Thomas C. DeLeire

The effectiveness of tax-favored savings accounts in raising national savings depends crucially upon the willingness of households to reduce consumption in order to finance contributions to these...

Differential Mortality and Wealth Accumulation

Orazio P. Attanasio, Hilary W. Hoynes

The issue of asset accumulation and decumulation is central to the life cycle theory of consumer behavior and to many policy questions. One of the main implications of the life cycle model is that...

Consumer Durables and Inertial Behavior: Estimation and Aggregation of (S,s) Rules

Orazio P. Attanasio

This paper presents an (S,s) model for automobile consumption and estimates it using a data set of US households. The model allows for unobserved heterogeneity in both the target level and the band...

Humps and Bumps in Lifetime Consumption

Orazio P. Attanasio, James Banks, Costas Meghir, Guglielmo Weber

In this paper we argue that once one departs from the simple classroom example, or `stripped down life-cycle model,' the empirical model for consumption growth can be made flexible enough to fit the...

Consumption Demand

Orazio P. Attanasio

Consumption is the largest component of GDP. Since the 1950s, the life cycle and the permanent income models have constituted the main analytical tools to the study of consumption behavior, both at...

Intertemporal Choice and the Cross-Sectional Variance of Marginal Utility

Orazio P. 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...

Differential Mortality in the UK

Orazio P. 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...

Estimating Euler Equations

Orazio P. Attanasio, Hamish Low

In this paper we consider conditions under which the estimation of a log-linearized Euler equation for consumption yields consistent estimates of the preference parameters. When utility is isoelastic...

Changes in Consumption at Retirement

Emma Aguila, Orazio P. Attanasio, Costas Meghir

Previous empirical literature has found a sharp decline in consumption during the first years of retirement implying that individuals do not save enough for their retirement. This phenomenon has been...

Booms and Busts: Consumption, House Prices and Expectations

ORAZIO P. ATTANASIO, LAURA BLOW, ROBERT HAMILTON, ANDREW LEICESTER

Over much of the past 25 years, house price and consumption growth have been closely synchronized. Three main hypotheses for this have been proposed: increases in house prices raise household wealth...

The Effects of IRAs on Household Consumption and National Saving

Orazio P. Attanasio, Thomas DeLeire

A major debate exists on whether expanding tax-favored savings accounts such as Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) will increase national savings. Much of the empirical debate on this question has...

Quantifying the Effects of the Demographic Transition in Developing Economies

Orazio P. 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...