Consumer Spending during Unemployment: Positive and Normative Implications
利用匿名银行账户数据，研究发现失业救济金到期时支出急剧下降，这一现象与理性流动性约束模型不符，而支持行为模型；延长救济金期限的消费平滑收益远高于提高救济金水平。
Using de-identified bank account data, we show that spending drops sharply at the large and predictable decrease in income arising from the exhaustion of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. We use the high-frequency response to a predictable income decline as a new test to distinguish between alternative consumption models. The sensitivity of spending to income we document is inconsistent with rational models of liquidity-constrained households, but is consistent with behavioral models with present-biased or myopic households. Depressed spending after exhaustion also implies that the consumption-smoothing gains from extending UI benefits are four times larger than from raising UI benefit levels.