Consumption and prices

We characterize inflation dynamics during the Great Lockdown using scanner data covering millions of transactions for fast-moving consumer goods in the United Kingdom. We show that there was a significant and widespread spike in inflation.

Soda taxes aim to reduce excessive sugar consumption. We assess who are most impacted by soda taxes. We estimate demand using micro longitudinal data covering on-the-go purchases, and exploit the panel dimension to estimate individual specific preferences. We relate these preferences and counterfactual predictions to individual characteristics and show that soda taxes are relatively effective at targeting the sugar intake of the young, are less successful at targeting the intake of those with high total dietary sugar, and are unlikely to be strongly regressive especially if consumers benefit from averted internalities.

This paper estimates the importance of temptation for consumption smoothing and asset accumulation in a structural life-cycle model.

There are many economic environments in which an object is offered sequentially to prospective buyers.

Manufacturers frequently pay fees to supermarkets when they temporarily reduce prices of their products.

Can consumption taxes reduce inequality in developing countries?

Soda taxes aim to reduce excessive sugar consumption.

Household borrowing and spending rise with house prices, particularly for leveraged households, but household spending is not consumption.

This paper investigates how different income shocks shape consumption dynamics over the business cycle. First, we break new ground by creating a unique, panel dataset of transitory and permanent income shocks, using subjective income expectations from the Dutch Household Survey.

From its inception, demand estimation has faced the problem of “many prices.”