Dr Hamish Low

We use direct evidence on credit constraints to study their importance for household consumption growth and for welfare.

This paper evaluates a novel form of fiscal stimulus: a temporary cut in the rate of Value Added Tax (VAT).

This paper examines trends in household consumption and saving behaviour in each of the last three recessions in the UK.

We develop a new approach to the decomposition of income risk within a nonstationary model of intertemporal choice. The approach allows for changes in income risk over the life cycle and across the business cycle, allowing for mixtures of persistent and transitory components in the dynamic process for income. We focus on what can be learned from repeated cross-section data alone. Evidence from a stochastic simulation of consumption choices in a nonstationarity environment is used to show the robustness of the method for decomposing income risk. The approach is used to investigate the changes in income risk in Britain across the inequality growth period from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. We document peaks in the variance of permanent shocks at the time of recessions.

We develop a new approach to the decomposition of income risk within a nonstationary model of intertemporal choice.

This paper analyses raw data in the UK to show that the income loss on separation for women who were cohabiting is less than the loss for those who were married.

The aim of this paper is to understand what a recession means for individual consumers, and to model in a life-cycle framework how individuals respond to recessions.

We use direct evidence on credit constraints to study their importance for household consumption growth and for welfare.

We model individual demand for housing over the life-cycle, and show the aggregate implications of this behaviour.

This paper examines trends in household consumption and saving behaviour in each of the last three recessions in the UK.

We show in a tractable life-cycle model how the optimal unemployment replacement ratio and the fall in consumption on job loss depend on the cost of self-insurance and the cost of borrowing.

We show that lottery players display higher income effects than non-players but only amongst those likely to be credit constrained.

In all common models of inter-temporal allocation, the assumption of a constant elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS) imposes surprising limitations on within-period budget allocations.

We specify a life-cycle model of consumption, labor supply and job mobility in an economy with search frictions. We distinguish different sources of risk, including shocks to productivity, job arrival, and job destruction. Allowing for job mobility has a large effect on the estimate of productivity risk. Increases in the latter impose a considerable welfare loss. Increases in employment risk have large effects on output and, primarily through this channel, affect welfare. The welfare value of programs such as Food Stamps, partially insuring productivity risk, is greater than the value of unemployment insurance which provides (partial) insurance against employment risk.

This paper provides a life-cycle framework for weighing up the insurance value of disability benefits against the incentive cost.