Aggregate consumption and debt accumulation: an empirical examination of US household behaviour
研究了2008年金融危机后美国家庭去杠杆化对消费的影响，实证检验了生命周期假说与后凯恩斯消费理论，发现后者更符合1950年代以来的美国数据。
The outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008 witnessed a significant contraction in US consumption spending, as households began deleveraging following a period marked by historically high levels of household borrowing. These events call into question the canonical life-cycle theory of consumption, with its benign view of debt as a neutral instrument of optimal intertemporal expenditure smoothing. This paper draws attention to an alternative, post-Keynesian account of consumption spending in which current income, household borrowing and household indebtedness all affect current consumption. Central to the analysis is an empirical investigation of US consumption spending since the 1950s. The results of this inquiry cast doubt on the life-cycle hypothesis, but are congruent with the alternative, post-Keynesian account of consumption.