The Price of Growth: Consumption Insurance in China 1989–2009
利用中国1989-2009年家庭面板数据，发现经济增长过程中消费保险持续恶化，永久性收入冲击对消费的传导至少增加了两倍，对增长福利评估有重要影响。
We exploit a novel and unique opportunity to document the transmission of income risk to consumption in a growing economy. Our laboratory is China, an economy that has witnessed enormous and sustained growth. We build a long panel of household-level consumption and income data. We find that consumption insurance deteriorates along the growth process with a transmission of permanent income shocks to consumption that at least triples from 1989 to 2009. Although preliminary, our welfare analysis suggests that the loss of consumption insurance can have first-order implications for the welfare assessment of economic growth.