The Effect of Macroeconomic Uncertainty on Household Spending
通过随机实验向家庭提供不同信息以改变其对未来经济不确定性的感知，发现不确定性上升会显著且持续地减少家庭月度总支出，涵盖各类消费品和耐用品。
We use randomized treatments that provide different types of information about the first and/or second moments of future economic growth to generate exogenous changes in the perceived macroeconomic uncertainty of treated households. The effects on their spending decisions relative to an untreated control group are measured in follow-up surveys. Our results indicate that, after taking into account first moments, higher macroeconomic uncertainty induces households to significantly and persistently reduce their total monthly spending in subsequent months. Changes in spending are broad based across spending categories and apply to larger durable good purchases as well.