How Much Consumption Insurance Beyond Self-Insurance?
比较了标准生命周期不完全市场模型中的消费平滑程度与Blundell等人基于美国数据的实证估计，发现数据中家庭对永久性收入冲击的保险程度高于模型预测，且实证估计量存在随借贷约束收紧而增大的向下偏差。
We assess the degree of consumption smoothing implicit in a calibrated life-cycle version of the standard incomplete-markets model, and we compare it to the empirical estimates of Richard Blundell, Luigi Pistaferri, and Ian Preston (2008) (BPP hereafter) on US data. Households in the data have access to more consumption insurance against permanent earnings shocks than in the model. BPP estimate that 36 percent of permanent shocks are insurable, whereas the model's counterpart of the BPP estimator varies between 7 percent and 22 percent, depending on the tightness of debt limits. We also show that the BPP estimator has a downward bias that grows as borrowing limits become tighter..