Income Mobility, Income Risk, and Welfare
构建了一个分析个体收入动态、流动性与福利的框架，利用墨西哥面板数据发现，大部分收入流动性由测量误差或暂时性冲击驱动，对福利几乎无影响，而持久性收入冲击则显著降低福利。
Abstract This paper presents a framework for the quantitative analysis of individual income dynamics, mobility, and welfare, with ex ante identical individuals facing a stochastic income process and market incompleteness, implying that they are unable to insure against persistent shocks to income. We show how the parameters of the income process can be estimated using repeated cross-sectional data with a short panel dimension and use a simple consumption-saving model for quantitative analysis of mobility and welfare. Our empirical application, using data on individual incomes from Mexico, provides striking results. Most of the measured income mobility is driven by measurement error or transitory income shocks and is therefore (almost) welfare neutral. Only a small part of measured income mobility is due to either welfare-reducing income risk or welfare-enhancing catching-up of low-income individuals with high-income individuals, both of which, nevertheless, have economically significant effects on social welfare. Strikingly, roughly half of the mobility that cannot be attributed to measurement error or transitory income shocks is driven by welfare-reducing persistent income shocks. Decomposing mobility into its fundamental components is thus crucial from the standpoint of welfare evaluation.