The Impact of a Conditional Cash Transfer Programme on Consumption in Colombia*

This paper studies the impact of a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia on the total consumption of very poor households and on its components. Our evaluation methodology involves comparing household expenditures in areas in which the programme was not implemented (control) and those in which it was (treated). We use a quasi‐experimental approach, as the Familias en Acción programme was not randomly assigned across localities, for political reasons. We condition on a large range of household‐ and municipality‐level characteristics, and also control for pre‐programme differences in the outcomes of interest using a differences‐indifferences methodology. We find that the programme has been effective at greatly increasing total consumption and its main component, food consumption, in both rural and urban areas. The programme has also contributed to improvements in the quality of food consumed, in particular of items rich in proteins (milk, meat and eggs) and of cereals. Furthermore, the programme has created redistributive effects in favour of children through expenditure on education and children's clothing, while it has not significantly affected consumption of adult goods such as alcohol and tobacco or adults’clothing.     

The Time‐Varying Volatility of Earnings and Aggregate Consumption Growth

Time‐varying specifications for the conditional variance of earnings of U.S. households are estimated with micro data over the period 1968–92. The cross‐sectional mean of the estimated time‐varying uncertainty of individual households has a significant impact on aggregate consumption growth. As such, aggregate precautionary savings may be more important than what is suggested by the results of estimating standard regression equations for aggregate consumption growth that incorporate only lagged income growth and the real interest rate. The estimation of a buffer stock consumption model with time‐varying earnings uncertainty suggests that the precautionary savings motive is cyclical and has become less important in the 1980s.     

Housing Finance Arrangements,Wealth Positioning and Housing Consumption in Japan: An Analysis of Built-for-sale Homeowners

Home purchase is financed through equity and debt. Housing finance arrangements require initial downpayments and impose monthly repayments. Similar to many countries, Japanese households accumulate savings out of their current income and receive private transfers from parents or relatives. From the survey conducted by the Ministry of Land, Transportation and Infrastructure from 1992 to 2000, the paper analyses the time spell until built-for sale homebuyers have amassed sufficient equity to meet the downpayment requirement. For the first-time buyers, private aid in form of cash was the dominant component of equity besides own savings. The innovative feature of our paper is to categorize the households into four classes of positive versus negative excess savings and positive versus negative excess “luck” as other equity sources including private transfers get termed here. For each category we estimate the duration of the accumulation process, and perform a sensitivity analysis that compares the spells under varying amounts of GHLC-loans with other types of mortgages. Since GHLC-loans are means-tested, they can effectively counteract the regressive effects arising from income; but as we will show they cannot really speed up the access in favour of the poorer strata. This finding sheds light on a growing wealth disparity that causes self-selection in ownership access.     

The Effect of the Recent Inheritance Tax Reform on Bequest Behaviour in Japan

This paper examines the behavioural response of households to wealth transfer taxation using household survey data from Japan, with particular attention being paid to the implications of different bequest motives that households may have. The data reveal that relatively few households plan to reallocate the newly taxable amount of wealth to their own consumption or inter vivos transfers in response to the recent lowering of the basic deduction of the inheritance tax. Our analysis shows that this partly reflects the fact that a relatively large share of households have no or a weak bequest motive in Japan. However, our estimation results also suggest that parents with an altruistic bequest motive are more likely to avoid an increase in their children's tax bill by reallocating the newly taxable amount of wealth to inter vivos transfers than those with no or a weak bequest motive. By contrast, parents with an exchange bequest motive are more likely to respond to the tax reform by reallocating the newly taxable amount of wealth to their own consumption, though they seem to exhibit a similar response to those with an altruistic bequest motive in some cases.     

Reassessing Conditional Cash Transfer Programs

During the past decade, the use of conditional cash transferprograms to increase investment in human capital has generatedconsiderable excitement in both research and policy forums.This article surveys the existing literature, which suggeststhat most conditional cash transfer programs are used for essentiallyone of two purposes: restoring efficiency when externalitiesexist or improving equity by targeting resources to poor households.The programs often meet their stated objectives, but in someinstances there is tension between the efficiency and equityobjectives. The overall impact of a program depends on the gainsand losses associated with each objective.      

How important is intra-household risk sharing for savings and labor supply?

While it is recognized that the family is a risk-sharing institution, little is known about the quantitative effects of this source of insurance on savings and labor supply. In this paper, we present a model where workers (females and males) are subject to idiosyncratic employment risk and where capital markets are incomplete. A household is formed by a female and a male, who decide on consumption, savings and labor supplies. In a calibrated version of our model we find that intra-household risk sharing has its largest impact among wealth-poor households. While the wealth-rich use mainly savings to smooth consumption across unemployment spells, wealth-poor households rely on spousal labor supply. For instance, for low-wealth households, average hours worked by wives of unemployed husbands are 8% higher than those worked by wives of employed husbands. This response in wives’ hours makes up 9% of lost family income. We also study consumption losses upon an unemployment spell, precautionary savings and the crowding out effects of the public unemployment insurance program on the extent of risk sharing within the household.     

The Effect of House Prices on Household Consumption in Italy

This paper studies the effect of a change in real estate wealth on the consumption behaviour of Italian households, using the Bank of Italy’s Survey of Household Income and Wealth dataset. We relate annual household consumption to capital gains in housing, controlling for characteristics such as age. In line with the empirical predictions of our model, we find the oldest households—which are less affected by the higher costs of future rent—to be the most affected by increases in real net housing wealth. Younger households, on the other hand, are not significantly affected in their consumption decisions by house price increases. We also take into account the fact that benefiting from capital gains is conditional on owning housing wealth and estimate the different impacts of house price changes on the savings behaviours of both homeowners and renters. Our estimates suggest that house price increases raise consumption not only for homeowners but also for renters.     

Security prices in a production economy with durable capital

Security prices and physical stocks of capital are determined jointly in a rational expectations economy as functions of a set of exogenous stochastic factors. Investors employ firm marginal productivity of capital to allocate savings across firms. Firm capital stocks adjust to exogenous shocks across many periods. Security price functions in period t are derived in the cases of constrained and unconstrained firm capital in t. The risk premia in security returns include two sets of terms. One set, corresponding to traditional asset pricing models, relates cash flows directly to the stochastic factors. The second set captures interfirm effects which arise because firm capital in each period t is durable.     

Evaluating the Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs

Several developing economies have recently introduced conditionalcash transfer programs, which provide money to poor familiescontingent on certain behavior, usually investments in humancapital, such as sending children to school or bringing themto health centers. The approach is both an alternative to moretraditional social assistance programs and a demand-side complementto the supply of health and education services. Unlike mostdevelopment initiatives, conditional cash transfer programshave been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectivenessusing experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Evaluationresults for programs launched in Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica,Mexico, Nicaragua, and Turkey reveal successes in addressingmany of the failures in delivering social assistance, such asweak poverty targeting, disincentive effects, and limited welfareimpacts. There is clear evidence of success from the first generationof programs in Colombia, Mexico, and Nicaragua in increasingenrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raisinghousehold consumption. Many questions remain unanswered, however,including the potential of conditional cash transfer programsto function well under different conditions, to address a broaderrange of challenges among poor and vulnerable populations, andto prevent the intergenerational transmission of poverty.      

信用卡、风险应对与城镇家庭股市参与

信用卡市场的发展有利于家庭平滑消费,但是否会影响家庭的投资决策尚缺少事实检验。基于中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)2011和2013年的调查数据,本文首次检验了信用卡对城镇家庭股市投资的影响。研究发现:(1)控制家庭财富、融资渠道、社会资本等特征,持有信用卡在边际上促进了家庭的股市参与率,股市投资额取决于信用额度。(2)中国信用卡市场的发展,并未像流动性约束理论预测的可以平滑消费,反而刺激了家庭风险性资产的配置,最终提高了储蓄率。原因在于,中国家庭更多地将信用卡作为应对未来短期突发性风险的金融工具,从而在当期将更多资产配置在风险资产上,以实现资本积累。使用信用卡数目、信用额度等多种衡量方式,并采用工具变量法(IV)和面板数据固定效应模型等解决内生性问题后,该结论稳健。该研究有助于理解信用卡在中国家庭投资决策的作用,并为流动性约束或有限股市参与假说提供中国经验。     

ACHIEVING SOCIAL OBJECTIVES THROUGH PRIVATE TRANSFERS: A Review

Private interhousehold cash transfers are an important sourceof income in many developing countries. Among the countrieswhose experience is reviewed in the article, the proportionof all households receiving private transfers ranges from afifth to a half. The amounts received are large, particularlywhen compared with the incomes of the poorest households. Understanding more about these transfers is important for designingpolicy because, among other things, these remittances providesocial and economic benefits similar to those of public programs,such as unemployment insurance, pension support, educationalcredit, and health assistance. As such, private transfers maysupplement or overlap with public transfers, and, if privatedonors give less as public transfers increase, the effect ofpublic programs on beneficiaries would be less than originallyintended. Or the transfers may alter the distributional effectsof public programs: for again, if private donors give less aspublic transfers increase, they share in some of the benefitsof public programs.      

消费信贷与家庭人力资本投资

已有丰富的文献考察了消费信贷对家庭消费和投资行为的影响，但少有研究关注其对家庭人力资本投资的影响。家庭人力资本投资对于人力资本积累、经济高质量发展至关重要。基于此，本文考察了信用卡使用对家庭人力资本投资的影响及其影响机制，主要发现如下：信用卡使用显著增加了家庭人力资本投资，且这一效应具有长期动态影响并对城市、高收入、高教育程度家庭影响更为显著，这意味着信用卡消费信贷可能会增加人力资本不平等。进一步研究发现，家庭会增加劳动力供给来应对人力资本支出的增加。机制分析表明，信用卡使用主要通过增加家庭消费投资、促进消费升级、缓解家庭预算约束三种途径促进家庭人力资本投资。在风险可控的前提下，引导消费信贷流向有利于实体经济发展的领域，可助力于消费升级与人力资本积累，从而为经济发展提供新动能。     

Medical Insurance Effects on Household Durable Goods Consumption: Evidence from China

In this article, we employ the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data to investigate the effect of medical insurance on household durable goods consumption, which is closely related to China’s future rapid economic growth. We apply a logit regression model and find that medical insurance significantly promotes household durable goods consumption. Moreover, urban and rural households have different consumption choices when they are covered by medical insurance. To be more specific, urban households with medical insurance augment their consumption of refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners; rural households with medical insurance increase their purchases of color TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, and computers.     

The Corporate Propensity to Save

Why do corporations accumulate liquid assets? We show theoretically that intertemporal trade‐offs between interest income taxation and the cost of external finance determine optimal savings. Intriguingly, we find that, controlling for Tobin's q, saving and cash flow are negatively related because firms lower cash reserves to invest after receiving positive cash‐flow shocks, and vice versa. Consistent with theory, we estimate negative propensities to save out of cash flow. We also find that income uncertainty affects saving more than do external finance constraints. Therefore, contrary to previous evidence, saving propensities reflect too many forces to be used to measure external finance constraints.     

Share issuance and cash savings

Firms increasingly issue shares for the purpose of cash savings. During the 1970s, $1.00 of issuance resulted in $0.23 of cash savings; over the most recent decade, $1.00 of issuance resulted in $0.60 of cash savings. This increase is caused by increasing precautionary motives. Proxies for precautionary motives increase over the sample period, and firm-level increases in these proxies are associated with firm-level increases in share issuance–cash savings. Share issuance–cash savings are inversely related to issuance costs, suggesting that firms issue and save when costs are low, so as to avoid issuing when costs are high. This framework can also help explain patterns and trends in share issuance activity over time. Market timing does not explain these effects, as share issuance–cash savings are not related to post-issuance stock returns.     

金融素养与家庭储蓄率——基于理财规划与借贷约束的解释

金融科技的发展使得人们参与金融市场的门槛与成本迅速降低,金融产品也不断丰富,金融市场参与者的异质性增加,金融素养对家庭金融决策的影响越来越明显。本文研究发现:(1)家庭在安排储蓄与消费时,金融素养有显著影响,金融素养与家庭储蓄率呈倒U型关系。(2)理财规划和借贷约束是影响家庭储蓄率上升的两个渠道。(3)金融素养由低逐渐升高时,家庭的理财规划意识增强,通过提高储蓄率来保障资金充足。当金融素养增加到一定程度,理财规划意识优化资产配置的作用增强,抑制消费的作用减弱,同时借贷约束缓解会帮助家庭增加消费。本文的发现有助于厘清家庭储蓄率差异的成因,对提升居民福利,增强金融教育政策的针对性,有积极意义。     

“加剧”还是“缓解”：政府转移支付与农户家庭未来减贫——基于贫困脆弱性视角的实证分析

基于2018年CFPS数据和Logit模型分析政府转移支付对农户家庭贫困脆弱性的影响及异质性。研究表明：政府转移支付总体上对农户家庭贫困脆弱性并未产生积极的改善效果,反而进一步促进了农户家庭贫困脆弱性增加。从区域异质性看,政府转移支付对贫困脆弱性的正向促进作用主要体现在中、西部地区,并且以中部地区尤为明显。从家庭特征看,政府转移支付主要促使收入贫困农户、非融资约束农户、非土地流转农户、非组织参与农户家庭贫困脆弱性增加,并且对绝对贫困农户的促进效应要大于相对贫困农户。对非收入贫困户、土地流转户和组织参与户家庭贫困脆弱性的影响不显著。从户主特征看,政府转移支付主要对户主健康家庭、自雇户主家庭的贫困脆弱性产生正向促进效应,对稳定受雇户主家庭贫困脆弱性的影响不显著。     

Cost Liability and Residential Space Heating Expenditures of Welfare Recipients in Germany*

Within the German welfare system, recipients’ heating expenditures are generally fully covered by the government. This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that households receiving welfare payments turn to overconsumption of residential space heating. We use micro‐data from two different data sources to explore whether the conditional heating expenditures of these households differ significantly from those of other households. Our empirical findings suggest that even when controlling for a range of other factors, this is indeed the case, as their heating expenditures lie about 7–8 per cent above those of other households. These results are fairly robust to sensitivity analyses. Comparing the results with those for a control group, expenditures for heating are still more than 5 per cent higher. Our results imply that there is potential scope for cost savings if this policy is changed.     

Durable Goods,Investment Shocks,and the Comovement Problem

Sticky‐price models suggest that capital investment shocks are an important driver of business cycle fluctuations. Despite quantitative importance in explaining business cycles, a comovement problem emerges because the shocks generate intertemporal substitution effects away from consumption toward investment. This paper resolves the problem by extending the standard sticky‐price model to a two‐sector model with consumer durable services. When durable goods are used as investment in capital and consumer durables, positive capital investment shocks also generate intratemporal substitution effects away from consumer durable services toward nondurable consumption that dominates intertemporal effects. Consequently, consumption increases, and the comovement problem is resolved.     

Durable goods and residential demand for energy and water: evidence from a field trial

This article describes a household production model in which energy‐efficient durable goods cost less to operate so households may use them more. The model is estimated using household‐level data from a field trial in which participants received high‐efficiency clothes washers free of charge. The estimation strategy exploits this quasi‐random replacement of washers to derive precise estimates of the household production technology and a demand function for clothes washing. During the field trial, households increased clothes washing on average by 5.6% after receiving a high‐efficiency washer, implying a price elasticity of ?.06. The complete model is used to evaluate the cost‐effectiveness of recent changes in minimum efficiency standards for clothes washers.