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Relative wage movements and the distribution of consumption

Attanasio, O.; Davis, S.J.; (1996) Relative wage movements and the distribution of consumption. Journal of Political Economy , 104 (6) pp. 1227-1262. 10.1086/262058. Green open access

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Abstract

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 best available cross-sectional data sets to construct synthetic panel data on U.S. consumption, labor supply, and wages during the 1980s. The authors find that low-frequency movements in the cohort-education structure of pretax hourly wages among men drove large changes in the distribution of household consumption. The results constitute a spectacular failure of between-group consumption insurance, a failure not explained by existing theories of informationally constrained optimal consumption behavior.

Type: Article
Title: Relative wage movements and the distribution of consumption
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1086/262058
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/262058
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright University of Chicago Press. Please see http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/15230/ for the NBER Working Paper version
Keywords: JEL classification: D12, J31. Hourly wages, households, wage
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/15224
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