Liquidity effects and habit formation in a sticky price model

This paper sets up a sticky price model with external habit formations. It shows that the cross-correlation between output and interest rates as well as prices match the data well when there is habit formation. Consumption as well as output display a hump-shaped response to a positive monetary shock when there is habit formation. The paper also shows that the sticky price model with Abel's (1990, 1999) external habit formation succeeds in generating liquidity effects.     

中国居民消费、习惯偏好与资产收益研究

习惯模型是行为资产定价理论的重要组成部分,该模型将经济主体的习惯因素纳入到资产定价之中,由此推进了消费资本资产定价理论的发展。习惯模型已经在欧美等国家和地区得到了广泛研究,而在资本市场蓬勃发展的中国则处于被人遗忘的尴尬境地。本文利用外在习惯偏好模型对我国居民消费、习惯偏好与资产收益进行分析。GMM结果是混合性的,模型可以较好地拟合数据,GMM结果无法否定外在习惯偏好模型,因而无法否定习惯因素在消费与资产收益分析中的重要性。     

A ONE‐SECTOR GROWTH MODEL WITH CONSUMPTION STANDARD: INDETERMINATE OR DETERMINATE?

In a representative agent, one-sector growth model in which the discounting is decreasing in the consumption standard measured as the current average consumption flow, Drugeon (1998) establishes local indeterminacy. This paper extends Drugeon's setup in the discount rate. In our setup, the consumption standard is a habit stock that a weighted average of the whole history of average consumption flows in the past. Local indeterminacy emerges only when the speed of habit formation tends to infinity; otherwise, local indeterminacy cannot appear, no matter how large the habit affects the discount rate.     

消费习惯、异质偏好与动态资产定价:纯交换经济情形

本文用Chan和Kogan、Bask和Cuoco等的方法考虑纯交换经济下的定价问题,我们引进了两个投资者:一个具有外在性消费习惯;一个不具有消费习惯。我们重点考察消费习惯对投资者的最优消费规则的影响以及对资产价格的确定。此外,我们还考虑了对数效用函数下,消费习惯以差的形式出现的情形下的消费规则和定价问题。我们发现当两个投资者中一个具有消费习惯而另一个不具有该习惯时,消费习惯同时改变两个投资者的最优消费规则、消费动态和财富动态。此时的动态资产定价受外在性消费习惯的影响,即时Sharpe比为常数,并等于同质量经济下的即时Sharpe比。同时,如果考虑对数效用函数下消费习惯以差的形式出现,则即时Sharpe比是时变的,反周期的。     

新凯恩斯货币政策模型

估计了新凯恩斯主义最优价格模型,并评估利用模型如何描述美国的产出、通货膨胀和利率变动;考虑模型中外在习惯形成是否影响消费者行为,并说明定价方法和通货指数形成价格和通胀惯性。该模型的时间一致均衡原则是用来估计关键行为参数的,据此研究最优货币政策的适应性。     

Portfolio choice with internal habit formation: a life-cycle model with uninsurable labor income risk

Motivated by the success of internal habit formation preferences in explaining asset pricing puzzles, we introduce these preferences in a life-cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice with liquidity constraints, undiversifiable labor income risk and stock-market participation costs. In contrast to the initial motivation, we find that the model is not able to simultaneously match two very important stylized facts: a low stock market participation rate, and moderate equity holdings for those households that do invest in stocks. Habit formation increases wealth accumulation because the intertemporal consumption smoothing motive is stronger. As a result, households start participating in the stock market very early in life, and invest their portfolios almost fully in stocks. Therefore, we conclude that, with respect to its ability to match the empirical evidence on asset allocation behavior, the internal habit formation model is dominated by its time-separable utility counterpart.     

Growth, habit formation, and catching-up with the Joneses

When habits are introduced multiplicatively in a capital accumulation model, the consumers’ objective function might fail to be concave. In this paper, we provide conditions aimed at guaranteeing the existence of interior solutions to the consumers’ problem. We also characterize the equilibrium path of two growth models with multiplicative habits: the internal habit formation model, where individual habits coincide with own past consumption, and the external habit formation (or catching-up with the Joneses) model, where habits arise from the average past consumption in the economy. We show that the introduction of external habits makes the equilibrium path inefficient. We characterize in this context the optimal tax policy.     

Can Habit Formation Be Reconciled with Business Cycle Facts?

Many asset pricing puzzles can be explained when habit formation is added to standard preferences. We show that utility functions with a habit then gives rise to a puzzle of consumption volatility in place of the asset pricing puzzles when agents can choose consumption and labor optimally in response to more fundamental shocks. We show that the consumption reaction to technology shocks is too small by an order of magnitude when a utility includes a consumption habit. Moreover, once a habit in leisure is included, labor input is counterfactually smooth over the cycle. In the case of habits in both consumption and leisure, labor input is even countercyclical. Consumption continues to be too smooth. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E13, E21, E32.     

Loss aversion and the term structure of interest rates

This article studies how the loss averse behaviour affects the term structure of real interest rates. Since the pro-cyclical conditional expected marginal rate of substitution, implied from the US consumption data, is consistent with the proposition of loss aversion, we incorporate the loss averse behaviour of prospect theory into the consumption-based asset pricing model. Motivated by the similarity between habit formation and the prospect theory utility, habit formation is exploited to determine endogenously the reference point of this behavioural finance utility. The highly curved characteristic of the term structure of real interest rates can thus be captured by the additional consideration of loss aversion. This model also fits the downward sloping volatility of the real yield curve in the data of US Treasury Inflation-Protection Securities (TIPS). Moreover, depending on the effective risk attitude of the representative agent with the loss averse behaviour of prospect theory, our model is capable of generating a normal or an inverted yield curve.     

Changing Economic Structures and Impacts of Shocks: Evidence from a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model for China

We present a small‐scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that features price rigidities, habit formation in consumption and costs in capital adjustment. We estimate the key parameters and calibrate the model with data for the Chinese economy. Our interest centres on the impact of technology and monetary policy shocks for different structures of the Chinese economy. In particular, we evaluate how a rebalancing of the economy from investment‐led to consumption‐led growth would affect the economic dynamics after a shock occurs. Our findings suggest that a rebalancing would reduce the volatility of the real economy in the event of a technology shock, which provides support for policies aiming to increase the consumption share in China.     

Delivering endogenous inertia in prices and output

This paper presents a DGE model in which aggregate price level inertia is generated endogenously by the optimizing behavior of price-setting firms. All the usual sources of inertia are absent here i.e., all firms are simultaneously free to change their price once every period and face no adjustment costs in doing so. Despite this, the model generates persistent movements in aggregate output and inflation in response to a nominal shock. Two modifications of a standard one-quarter pre-set pricing model deliver these results: learning-by-doing and habit formation in leisure. While the model delivers persistence, simulations based on estimated shocks to tfp and money growth suggest both output and inflation are too volatile relative to the data and fail to closely follow the historical time series.     

Habit persistence and stagnation

Using a money-in-the-utility function model that incorporates habit formation in consumption, we consider the question of how allowing for habit formation affects the possibility of a persistent shortage of consumption. We then contrast the model without habits with a model with habits. The main findings of our analysis are that i) when the degree of habit formation is important, a high degree of habit persistence opens up the possibility of a shortage of consumption, and ii) in the steady state with stagnation, the equilibrium consumption in the model with habit formation is smaller than the corresponding consumption without habits.     

Rational Pessimism, Rational Exuberance, and Asset Pricing Models

The paper estimates and examines the empirical plausibility of asset pricing models that attempt to explain features of financial markets such as the size of the equity premium and the volatility of the stock market. In one model, the long-run risks (LRR) model of Bansal and Yaron, low-frequency movements, and time-varying uncertainty in aggregate consumption growth are the key channels for understanding asset prices. In another, as typified by Campbell and Cochrane, habit formation, which generates time-varying risk aversion and consequently time variation in risk premia, is the key channel. These models are fitted to data using simulation estimators. Both models are found to fit the data equally well at conventional significance levels, and they can track quite closely a new measure of realized annual volatility. Further, scrutiny using a rich array of diagnostics suggests that the LRR model is preferred.     

Supply side inflation persistence

We explore the role of the cost channel in accounting for inflation persistence in the New Keynesian model with Calvo pricing. Hump-shaped responses of inflation to monetary shocks are obtained under purely nominal rigidities.     

Should central bankers discount the future? A note

Optimal monetary policy under discretion is analysed in a New Keynesian model with rule of thumb pricing. The paper finds that social welfare increases if the policy maker does not discount the future. The welfare improvement rises with the extent of intrinsic inflation persistence.     

Using long-run consumption-return correlations to test asset pricing models

This paper examines a new set of implications for existing asset pricing models regarding the correlation between returns and consumption growth over both the short run and the long run. The findings suggest that external habit formation models face a challenge in producing two robust facts in aggregate data, namely, that stock market returns lead consumption growth, and that the correlation between returns and consumption growth is higher at low frequencies. To reconcile these facts with a consumption-based model, I demonstrate the need for focusing on models that contain a forward-looking consumption component, i.e., models that allow for both trend and cyclical fluctuations in consumption, and that link returns to cyclical fluctuations in consumption. Long-run risk models provide examples of models that contain this consumption component.     

Aggregate labor market fluctuations under news shocks

The standard RBC model fails to replicate the relationship between aggregate hours worked and average productivity. We propose a DSGE model that incorporates habit formation preferences, capital adjustment costs, and news shocks to solve the puzzle implied in the standard RBC model with only technological shocks. The aggregate labor supply curve is shifted due to the wealth effect caused by the variation of consumption under a news shock. Moreover, capital adjustment costs help amplify the variation of consumption, and thus the movement of the aggregate labor supply curve under the news shock. Also, the aggregate demand curve will be shifted, as it operates in the standard RBC model after the realization of the news shock. As a result of the joint movement of the aggregate labor supply curve and aggregate labor demand curve under the news shock, the model achieves a relationship quite close to the empirically observed relationship.     

Habit formation and housing over the life cycle

We explore the role of habit formation in housing in explaining the life-cycle household allocations. Empirical studies about households in the U.S. reveal that the housing profile increases monotonically until age mid-60s and then flattens out. The model is realistically calibrated and solved numerically under different habit strength parameters. For all values of the parameter, our model produces lower reduction of housing for the elderly compared to the standard model which does not include habit formation. The amount of reduction in housing in the old ages and the level of housing decrease significantly as habit strength increases. The person becomes more attached to his house with a higher habit strength. Considering intolerance towards housing reductions, one consumes a lower amount of housing in the young ages to be able to maintain it in the old ages. These results suggest that in addition to the transaction costs in house trading, habit formation in housing also has a merit in explaining the preservation of housing for elderly people. Our model improves on the literature by investigating the effects of a habit formation behind household allocations and by reducing the role of transaction costs in solving the housing puzzle of the elderly. It contributes to the literature by using a new model with a deep habit preference form and housing. Our model should be preferred to the existing ones since it provides a richer and more real framework for modeling households.     

Deep habits in consumption: a spatial panel analysis using scanner data

Using scanner data from a large European retailer, this paper empirically assesses deep habit formation in consumption. Deep habit formation constitutes a possible source of price stickiness and helps to mimic procyclical labour and real wage dynamics that are present in macrodata. To gauge the existence and the extent of deep habits in consumption, we estimate a dynamic time–space simultaneous model for consumption expenditure at different levels of product aggregation. This spatial panel model enables us to test for both internal and external deep habit formation at the same time. The former captures inertia or persistence in consumption and is included in the empirical specification as a time lag. The latter captures preference interdependence across households and is captured by a spatial lag. Our results show mixed evidence with respect to internal habit formation, whereas the external habit effect is almost always positive and significant.     

Rational habit formation

This paper discusses consumer demand under rational habit formation. If consumer tastes change endogenously through habit stocks depending on past consumption, the rational consumer will make allowance of the future habit forming effects of current consumption. A model with rational habit formation is made formally equivalent to an intertemporal consumer model without habit formation by redefining the cost of consumption and wealth. The cost of consumption is obtained by adding the cost of future induced consumption to the rental price of the commodity. The extended wealth concept is obtained by subtracting the cost of the initial stocks of habits and the cost of future physically necessary consumption from wealth. The paper also investigates the implication of rational habit formation for constructing one period cost of living indices.