Household Responses to Direct Stimulus Payments and Other Shocks

Date: Thursday August 25th 2022

Time: 08:50 EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)

Location: Online (through Zoom platform)

OVERVIEW

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted economies and society on a scale never witnessed before. To protect lives and livelihoods and ensure business continuity, governments have implemented a plethora of relief measures, including in the fiscal area, resulting in increased borrowing to unprecedented levels. As most countries are constrained by their debt burden in the amount of fiscal resources they can bring to the war against COVID-19, now and in the future, it is important to design fiscal policies carefully for optimal results.

This second one-day virtual event brings together frontier academic research by scholars. The event focuses on the broad policy question: How much of an unexpected income transfer would the household spend for consumption during a short horizon? In other words:

• What is households’ Marginal Propensity to Consume (MPC) out of transitory income?

• How is the marginal propensity to consumer affected by wealth, liquidity and other variables pertaining to the individual characteristics of the consumers?

• And another related question is how households shift their financial positions and portfolios as a result of income shocks.

The programme of the workshop is as follows:

08:50 – 09:00 EDT: Welcome and housekeeping

09:00 – 10:00 EDT : Paper 1:

‘The Anatomy of Consumption in a Household Foreign Currency Debt Crisis,’ (Gyozo Gyongyosi [Leibniz Institute of Financial Research SAFE], Judit Rariga [European Central Bank] and Emil Verner [MIT])

Discussant: Dimitris Christelis (University of Glasgow)

10:00 – 11:00 EDT: Paper 2:

‘Fiscal Stimulus, Inter- and Intratemporal Consumption Spending: Evidence from a 5 Billion Euro Experiment,’ (Gregor Pfeifer (University of Sydney), Davud Rostam-Afschar [University of Mannheim], Tim Ruberg [University of Honenheim] and Lukas Treber [University of Honenheim])

Discussant: Michael Boutros (Bank of Canada)

11:00 – 11:15 EDT: Break

11:15 – 12:15 EDT: Paper 3:

‘Who are the Hand to Mouth?’ (Marc Aguiar [Princeton University], Mark Bils [University of Rochester] and Corina Boar [New York University])

Discussant: Krisztina Molnar (NHH Norwegian School of Economics)

12:15 EDT: Closing Remarks

The workshop will follow the 30-20-10 rule: 29 minutes for presentation, 20 minutes for discussion and 10 minutes for general discussion.

REGISTRATION

Please register using the ‘register’ link on this page.

If you have any questions regarding the event please contact: tarc@exeter.ac.uk

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The research project was supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the 4th Call for Action “Science and Society”- Emblematic Action – “Interventions to address the economic and social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic” (Project Number: 050007).

Financial support from the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) is also gratefully acknowledged by TARC.