Orazio P Attanasio
Biographic Data
| ID | 976606 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Orazio P Attanasio |
| GIVEN NAMES | Orazio P |
| FAMILY NAME | Attanasio |
| SIGNATURE | ATTANASIO O P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Orazio P. Attanasio is Jeremy Bentham Professor of Economics, University College London, London, United Kingdom, and Research Fellow, Institute for Fiscal Studies, both in London, United Kingdom. |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 181 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Preschool Quality and Child Development
Consumption Inequality
In this essay, we discuss the importance of consumption inequality in the debate concerning the measurement of disparities in economic well-being. We summarize the advantages and disadvantages of using consumption as opposed to income for measuring trends in economic well-being. We critically evaluate the available evidence on these trends, and in particular discuss how the literature has evolved in its assessment of whether consumption inequalit…
Frank Ramsey's a Mathematical Theory of Saving
Ramsey, F.P. (1928). 'A mathematical theory of saving', Economic Journal, vol. 38(152), pp. 543–59
Education choices and returns to schooling
Efficient Responses to Targeted Cash Transfers
We estimate and test the restrictions of a collective model of household consumption, using z-conditional demands, in the context of a large conditional cash transfer program in rural Mexico. The model can explain the impacts of the program on the structure of food consumption. We use two plausible and novel distribution factors: the random allocation of a cash transfer to women and the relative size and wealth of the husband's and wife's family …
Community Nurseries and the Nutritional Status of Poor Children. Evidence from Colombia
We use two different data sets and three different instruments to estimate the impact of a long‐established pre‐school nursery programme on children's nutritional status. We use variables related to cost (fee, distance to the nursery) and programme availability (capacity of the programme in the town) as instruments. One of our data sets is representative of very poor individuals living in rural areas of Colombia, while the other focuses in urban …
Booms and Busts
Over much of the past 25 years, house price and consumption growth have been closely synchronized. Three main hypotheses for this have been proposed: increases in house prices raise household wealth and so their consumption; house price growth reduces credit constraints by increasing the collateral available to homeowners; and house prices and consumption are together influenced by common factors. Using microeconomic data, we find that the relati…
Wage shocks and consumption variability in Mexico during the 1990s
Limited commitment and crowding out of private transfers
This paper studies some empirical implications of models with limited risk sharing due to the imperfect enforceability of contracts. We test whether the amount by which public transfers reduce private transfers is affected by features of the economy, such as the variance of income and its persistence. These implications are unique to models with imperfect enforceability. We use data from Mexico collected to evaluate a public transfer programme. I…
Asset Holding and Consumption Volatility
We investigate the possibility that limited participation in asset markets, and the stock market in particular, might explain the lack of correspondence between the sample moments of the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution and asset returns in U.K. data. We estimate ownership probabilities to separate "likely" shareholders from nonshareholders, enabling us to control for changing composition effects as well as selection into the group. We…
The Demand for Money, Financial Innovation, and the Welfare Cost of Inflation
We use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized Baumol-Tobin model. Our data set contains information on average currency, deposits, and other interest-bearing assets; the number of trips to the bank; the size of withdrawals; and ownership and use of ATM cards. We model the demand for currency accounting for adoption of new transaction technologies and the decision to hold i…
The Effect of Individual Retirement Accounts on Household Consumption and National Saving
A major debate exists on whether expanding tax‐favoured savings accounts such as Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) will increase national savings. Much of the empirical debate has centred on whether IRA contributions before the Tax Reform Act of 1986 represented new savings or merely reshuffled assets. We find no evidence that households financed their IRA contributions from reductions in consumption, at least initially. We find evidence that…
Intertemporal Choice and the Cross-Sectional Variance of Marginal Utility
The theory of intertemporal choice predicts that the cross-sectional variance of the marginal utility of consumption is equal to its own lag plus a constant and a random component. Using general preference specifications and some assumptions about the nature of the random component, we provide an explicit test of this hypothesis. Our approach circumvents the necessity to identify a pure age profile of the cross-sectional variance of consumption a…
Saving, Growth, and Investment
This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the long- and short-run correlations among saving, investment, and growth rates for 123 countries over the period 1961-94. Three results are robust across data sets and estimation methods: i) lagges saving rates are positively related to investment rates; ii) investment rates Granger cause growth rates with a negative sign; iii) growth rates Granger-cause investment with a positive sign
Humps and Bumps in Lifetime Consumption
In this article we argue that the life-cycle model that allows demographics to affect household preferences and relaxes the assumption of certainty equivalence can generate hump-shaped consumption profiles over age that are very similar to those observed in household-level data sources and, in particular, match the differences in shape across different education groups. Liquidity constraints or myopia are not required to explain the empirical fea…
Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey
In this paper, the authors show that some of the predictions of models of consumer intertemporal optimization are in line with the patterns of nondurable expenditure observed in U.S. household-level data. They propose a flexible specification of preferences that allows multiple commodities and yields empirically tractable equations. The authors estimate preference parameters using the only U.S. micro data set with complete consumption information…
On the Aggregation of Euler Equations for Consumption in Simple Overlapping-Generations Models
If consumers have finite lives, the aggregate consumption growth equation is affected by entries and exits (births and deaths). We use two- and three-period overlapping-generations (OLG) models to show that entries and exits produce a relationship between aggregate consumption growth and the interest rate that is fundamentally different from the individual Euler equation for consumption. If aggregate data are used to estimate an 'aggregate' Euler…
The UK Consumption Boom of the Late 1980s
Journal Article The UK Consumption Boom of the Late 1980s: Aggregate Implications of Microeconomic Evidence Get access Orazio P. Attanasio, Orazio P. Attanasio Stanford University, University of Bologna, NBER and IFS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Guglielmo Weber Guglielmo Weber University of Venice and IFS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volu…
Intertemporal Substitution, Risk Aversion and the Euler Equation for Consumption
Journal Article Intertemporal Substitution, Risk Aversion and the Euler Equation for Consumption Get access Orazio P. Attanasio, Orazio P. Attanasio London School of Economics Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Guglielmo Weber Guglielmo Weber University College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 99, Issue 395, 1 April 1989, Pages 59–73,…
Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey
In this paper, the authors show that some of the predictions of models of consumer intertemporal optimization are in line with the patterns of nondurable expenditure observed in U.S. household-level data. They propose a flexible specification of preferences that allows multiple commodities and yields empirically tractable equations. The authors estimate preference parameters using the only U.S. micro data set with complete consumption information…
Efficient Responses to Targeted Cash Transfers
We estimate and test the restrictions of a collective model of household consumption, using z-conditional demands, in the context of a large conditional cash transfer program in rural Mexico. The model can explain the impacts of the program on the structure of food consumption. We use two plausible and novel distribution factors: the random allocation of a cash transfer to women and the relative size and wealth of the husband's and wife's family …
Booms and Busts
Over much of the past 25 years, house price and consumption growth have been closely synchronized. Three main hypotheses for this have been proposed: increases in house prices raise household wealth and so their consumption; house price growth reduces credit constraints by increasing the collateral available to homeowners; and house prices and consumption are together influenced by common factors. Using microeconomic data, we find that the relati…
Education choices and returns to schooling
The UK Consumption Boom of the Late 1980s
Journal Article The UK Consumption Boom of the Late 1980s: Aggregate Implications of Microeconomic Evidence Get access Orazio P. Attanasio, Orazio P. Attanasio Stanford University, University of Bologna, NBER and IFS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Guglielmo Weber Guglielmo Weber University of Venice and IFS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volu…
Consumption Inequality
In this essay, we discuss the importance of consumption inequality in the debate concerning the measurement of disparities in economic well-being. We summarize the advantages and disadvantages of using consumption as opposed to income for measuring trends in economic well-being. We critically evaluate the available evidence on these trends, and in particular discuss how the literature has evolved in its assessment of whether consumption inequalit…
Community Nurseries and the Nutritional Status of Poor Children. Evidence from Colombia
We use two different data sets and three different instruments to estimate the impact of a long‐established pre‐school nursery programme on children's nutritional status. We use variables related to cost (fee, distance to the nursery) and programme availability (capacity of the programme in the town) as instruments. One of our data sets is representative of very poor individuals living in rural areas of Colombia, while the other focuses in urban …
Limited commitment and crowding out of private transfers
This paper studies some empirical implications of models with limited risk sharing due to the imperfect enforceability of contracts. We test whether the amount by which public transfers reduce private transfers is affected by features of the economy, such as the variance of income and its persistence. These implications are unique to models with imperfect enforceability. We use data from Mexico collected to evaluate a public transfer programme. I…
Intertemporal Substitution, Risk Aversion and the Euler Equation for Consumption
Journal Article Intertemporal Substitution, Risk Aversion and the Euler Equation for Consumption Get access Orazio P. Attanasio, Orazio P. Attanasio London School of Economics Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Guglielmo Weber Guglielmo Weber University College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 99, Issue 395, 1 April 1989, Pages 59–73,…
Wage shocks and consumption variability in Mexico during the 1990s
Asset Holding and Consumption Volatility
We investigate the possibility that limited participation in asset markets, and the stock market in particular, might explain the lack of correspondence between the sample moments of the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution and asset returns in U.K. data. We estimate ownership probabilities to separate "likely" shareholders from nonshareholders, enabling us to control for changing composition effects as well as selection into the group. We…
Preschool Quality and Child Development
The Demand for Money, Financial Innovation, and the Welfare Cost of Inflation
We use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized Baumol-Tobin model. Our data set contains information on average currency, deposits, and other interest-bearing assets; the number of trips to the bank; the size of withdrawals; and ownership and use of ATM cards. We model the demand for currency accounting for adoption of new transaction technologies and the decision to hold i…
The Effect of Individual Retirement Accounts on Household Consumption and National Saving
A major debate exists on whether expanding tax‐favoured savings accounts such as Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) will increase national savings. Much of the empirical debate has centred on whether IRA contributions before the Tax Reform Act of 1986 represented new savings or merely reshuffled assets. We find no evidence that households financed their IRA contributions from reductions in consumption, at least initially. We find evidence that…
Intertemporal Substitution, Risk Aversion and the Euler Equation for Consumption
Journal Article Intertemporal Substitution, Risk Aversion and the Euler Equation for Consumption Get access Orazio P. Attanasio, Orazio P. Attanasio London School of Economics Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Guglielmo Weber Guglielmo Weber University College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volume 99, Issue 395, 1 April 1989, Pages 59–73,…
The UK Consumption Boom of the Late 1980s
Journal Article The UK Consumption Boom of the Late 1980s: Aggregate Implications of Microeconomic Evidence Get access Orazio P. Attanasio, Orazio P. Attanasio Stanford University, University of Bologna, NBER and IFS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Guglielmo Weber Guglielmo Weber University of Venice and IFS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Economic Journal, Volu…
Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey
In this paper, the authors show that some of the predictions of models of consumer intertemporal optimization are in line with the patterns of nondurable expenditure observed in U.S. household-level data. They propose a flexible specification of preferences that allows multiple commodities and yields empirically tractable equations. The authors estimate preference parameters using the only U.S. micro data set with complete consumption information…
On the Aggregation of Euler Equations for Consumption in Simple Overlapping-Generations Models
If consumers have finite lives, the aggregate consumption growth equation is affected by entries and exits (births and deaths). We use two- and three-period overlapping-generations (OLG) models to show that entries and exits produce a relationship between aggregate consumption growth and the interest rate that is fundamentally different from the individual Euler equation for consumption. If aggregate data are used to estimate an 'aggregate' Euler…
Humps and Bumps in Lifetime Consumption
In this article we argue that the life-cycle model that allows demographics to affect household preferences and relaxes the assumption of certainty equivalence can generate hump-shaped consumption profiles over age that are very similar to those observed in household-level data sources and, in particular, match the differences in shape across different education groups. Liquidity constraints or myopia are not required to explain the empirical fea…
Saving, Growth, and Investment
This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the long- and short-run correlations among saving, investment, and growth rates for 123 countries over the period 1961-94. Three results are robust across data sets and estimation methods: i) lagges saving rates are positively related to investment rates; ii) investment rates Granger cause growth rates with a negative sign; iii) growth rates Granger-cause investment with a positive sign
Intertemporal Choice and the Cross-Sectional Variance of Marginal Utility
The theory of intertemporal choice predicts that the cross-sectional variance of the marginal utility of consumption is equal to its own lag plus a constant and a random component. Using general preference specifications and some assumptions about the nature of the random component, we provide an explicit test of this hypothesis. Our approach circumvents the necessity to identify a pure age profile of the cross-sectional variance of consumption a…
Asset Holding and Consumption Volatility
We investigate the possibility that limited participation in asset markets, and the stock market in particular, might explain the lack of correspondence between the sample moments of the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution and asset returns in U.K. data. We estimate ownership probabilities to separate "likely" shareholders from nonshareholders, enabling us to control for changing composition effects as well as selection into the group. We…
The Demand for Money, Financial Innovation, and the Welfare Cost of Inflation
We use microeconomic data on households to estimate the parameters of the demand for currency derived from a generalized Baumol-Tobin model. Our data set contains information on average currency, deposits, and other interest-bearing assets; the number of trips to the bank; the size of withdrawals; and ownership and use of ATM cards. We model the demand for currency accounting for adoption of new transaction technologies and the decision to hold i…
The Effect of Individual Retirement Accounts on Household Consumption and National Saving
A major debate exists on whether expanding tax‐favoured savings accounts such as Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) will increase national savings. Much of the empirical debate has centred on whether IRA contributions before the Tax Reform Act of 1986 represented new savings or merely reshuffled assets. We find no evidence that households financed their IRA contributions from reductions in consumption, at least initially. We find evidence that…
Wage shocks and consumption variability in Mexico during the 1990s
Limited commitment and crowding out of private transfers
This paper studies some empirical implications of models with limited risk sharing due to the imperfect enforceability of contracts. We test whether the amount by which public transfers reduce private transfers is affected by features of the economy, such as the variance of income and its persistence. These implications are unique to models with imperfect enforceability. We use data from Mexico collected to evaluate a public transfer programme. I…
Booms and Busts
Over much of the past 25 years, house price and consumption growth have been closely synchronized. Three main hypotheses for this have been proposed: increases in house prices raise household wealth and so their consumption; house price growth reduces credit constraints by increasing the collateral available to homeowners; and house prices and consumption are together influenced by common factors. Using microeconomic data, we find that the relati…
Community Nurseries and the Nutritional Status of Poor Children. Evidence from Colombia
We use two different data sets and three different instruments to estimate the impact of a long‐established pre‐school nursery programme on children's nutritional status. We use variables related to cost (fee, distance to the nursery) and programme availability (capacity of the programme in the town) as instruments. One of our data sets is representative of very poor individuals living in rural areas of Colombia, while the other focuses in urban …
Education choices and returns to schooling
Efficient Responses to Targeted Cash Transfers
We estimate and test the restrictions of a collective model of household consumption, using z-conditional demands, in the context of a large conditional cash transfer program in rural Mexico. The model can explain the impacts of the program on the structure of food consumption. We use two plausible and novel distribution factors: the random allocation of a cash transfer to women and the relative size and wealth of the husband's and wife's family …
Frank Ramsey's a Mathematical Theory of Saving
Ramsey, F.P. (1928). 'A mathematical theory of saving', Economic Journal, vol. 38(152), pp. 543–59
Consumption Inequality
In this essay, we discuss the importance of consumption inequality in the debate concerning the measurement of disparities in economic well-being. We summarize the advantages and disadvantages of using consumption as opposed to income for measuring trends in economic well-being. We critically evaluate the available evidence on these trends, and in particular discuss how the literature has evolved in its assessment of whether consumption inequalit…
Preschool Quality and Child Development
Economics (18 works) · Econometrics (11 works) · Financial Literacy, Pension, Retirement Analysis (10 works) · Consumption (sociology (7 works) · Mathematics (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Demographic economics (5 works) · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth (5 works) · Housing Market and Economics (5 works) · Macroeconomics (5 works)