Future Consumption Growth Research Articles

Resource Rents, Genuine Savings and Sustainable Development: Revisiting the Evidence

Economic theory on sustainable development suggests that resource-rich countries should reinvest the rents from natural resource extraction in other forms of capital to ensure that future consumption level of the economy can be greater than or at least equal to the level of their current consumption. Several seminal papers in the early 2000s indicated that the correlation between genuine savings and future consumption was weaker than theory predicted, at least when genuine savings were measured using the World Bank estimates. This paper revisits the issue and replicates two of these earlier studies to see whether the correlation has become stronger over time, on the back of policy changes in resource-rich countries and of revisions to the World Bank estimates. The results indicate that the correlation between genuine savings and future consumption growth may be stronger for poorer countries than for richer, and for sub-Saharan Africa, the theoretical predictions appear to hold.

Who Are the Hand-to-Mouth?

Abstract Many households hold little wealth. In standard precautionary savings models, these households should not only display higher marginal propensities to consume (MPCs) but also higher future consumption growth. In contrast, we see from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics that such “hand-to-mouth” households do not display higher growth in spending. They also exhibit greater volatility of spending and adjust their spending to a greater extent through the number of categories consumed. Consistent with a role for preference heterogeneity, the panel data show that it is persistent differences across households, not current assets, that predict low consumption growth and other spending differences for the hand-to-mouth households. To identify the extent of preference heterogeneity, we consider the model of Kaplan and Violante with both liquid and illiquid assets, but allow heterogeneity in preferences. To match the data, many poor hand-to-mouth must be relatively impatient and have a high inter-temporal elasticity of substitution. The model shows that preferences predominantly explain the higher MPCs for low-asset households. Preference heterogeneity notably increases the spending impact of fiscal transfers, but only if targeted, while reducing that from interest rate cuts.

Consumption Growth Persistence and the Stock–Bond Correlation

Abstract We consider a model in which the correlation between shocks to consumption and to expected future consumption growth is nonzero and varies over time. We validate this assumption empirically using the model’s implication that time variation in consumption growth persistence (CGP) drives the correlation between stock and bond returns. Our model implies that the stock–bond correlation is also related to the predictive relation between bond yields and future stock returns. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that asset price fluctuations are the primary driver of changes in CGP.

Industry bubbles and unexpected consumption shocks: A cross-sectional explanation of stock returns under recursive preferences

Assuming an environment with rational and informed agents, where investors exhibit recursive preferences and make their economic decisions embedding industry bubbles into their information sets, we study to what extent unexpected consumption shocks can proxy for revisions in expected consumption growth and, consequently, explain the cross-sectional behavior of stock returns. Our results show that unexpected consumption shocks help forecast future consumption growth, allowing the Epstein-Zin model to satisfactorily explain the equity risk premium of different anomaly portfolios on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Furthermore, our model provides a better understanding on the dynamics of consumption and its relationship to stock returns.

Output gap and consumption risk on the cross-section of stock returns in Korea

We examine if output gap can be the conditioning information for consumption-based asset pricing model in the Korean stock market. In an effort to empirically explain the cross-sectional variation of stock returns with economic equilibrium model, our conditioning variable, output gap, enables consumption capital asset pricing model (CCAPM) to explain a substantial variation in the cross-section of stock returns in Korea. In addition, the conditional version of CCAPM with output gap as a conditioning variable can explain the cross-section of stock returns about as well as the Fama-French three- and five-factor model when using future consumption growth. Asset's riskiness is determined by the correlation with consumption growth conditional on the business cycle measured by the output gap. (JEL G12).

Long‐Run Risk: Is It There?

ABSTRACTThis paper documents the existence of a persistent component in consumption growth. We take a novel approach using news coverage to capture investor concern about economic growth prospects. We provide evidence that consumption growth is highly predictable over long horizons—our measure explains between 23% and 38% of cumulative future consumption growth at the five‐year horizon and beyond. Furthermore, we show a strong connection between this predictability and asset prices. Innovations to our measure price 51 standard portfolios in the cross section and our one‐factor model outperforms many benchmark macro‐ and return‐based multifactor models.

Dynamic Material Flow Analysis of Cement in Iran: New Insights for Sustainability of Civil Infrastructures

In this article, a Dynamic Material Flow Analysis (DMFA) model is presented that characterizes the stocks and flows of cement from 1963 to 2063 in Iran. Using cement consumption data for the period of 1963-2018 an attempt is made to provide reliable estimates of the present as well as future cement in-use stocks and discards (from 2019 to 2063) to relevant stakeholders such as the Ministry of Road and Urban Development, Department of Environment, public and private utilities, and the construction and cement industries. Based on a normal lifetime distribution, a flow dynamic model is developed for each cement end-use category including buildings, infrastructures and others. Each sub model is simulated with 9 scenarios made from combinations of 3 scenarios for future cement consumption growth rate and 3 scenarios for the mean lifetime of the structures. For the base scenario, the model-derived estimate of in-use cement stock and cumulative discard for the year 2063 is 2191 million metric tons (Mt) and 1856 Mt, respectively. Such a great discard should be considered in policy making for better life cycle management of cement in Iran. The main finding of the paper is that by increasing the mean lifetime of the structures (especially buildings), the amount of cumulative cement discard in 2063 can be drastically decreased (generally over 50%) and this decrease will not be affected considerably by the cement consumption growth rate in the future. So this can be a reliable strategy for the sustainable life cycle management of infrastructures in Iran.

Aggregate consumption and wealth in the long run: The impact of financial liberalization

SummaryThis paper investigates the impact of financial liberalization on the relationship between consumption and total wealth (i.e., the sum of asset wealth and human wealth). Financial liberalization is persistent and may signal changes in expected future consumption growth rates and/or in rates of return on wealth that, through the intertemporal budget constraint, affect the current consumption–wealth ratio. We estimate the long‐run relationship between consumption, total wealth, and financial liberalization by state space methods using quarterly US data. The results show that the trend in the consumption–wealth ratio is well‐captured by our baseline liberalization indicator. We find that the increase in this indicator over the sample period has increased the consumption–wealth ratio with about 10%. Investigating the responsible channel, additional estimates show that financial liberalization has predictive power for aggregate consumption growth rather than for returns, a result that supports an incomplete markets interpretation of the link between liberalization and the consumption–wealth ratio.

Macroeconomic Disasters and Forward-Looking Consumers: Historical Evidence and Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Macroeconomic disasters (wars, pandemics, depressions) are characterized by drastic shifts and increased volatility of the aggregate consumption to income ratio. By standard intertemporal budget constraint logic, this ratio is linked to expectations of future income and consumption growth rates. We investigate whether these expectations suffice to explain the shifts in the consumption-income ratio that occur during disaster periods or whether, on the other hand, consumers become more forward-looking and therefore give more weight to these expectations during disaster times. Our theoretical framework implies that the predictive ability of the current consumption-income ratio for future income and consumption growth rates is higher during disaster episodes. We check this both for past disasters and the current COVID-19 pandemic through the estimation of panel data regressions for industrial economies using historical annual data (1870 - 2015) and recent quarterly data (1995Q1 - 2020Q4). Our estimations confirm that macroeconomic disasters, contrary to ordinary recessions, make consumers more forward-looking.

Discounting for Energy Transition Policies—Estimation of the Social Discount Rate for Poland

The transition of the energy system in Poland has a long time horizon and demands a substantial investment effort supported by proper economic evaluation. It requires a precise Social Discount Rate (SDR) estimation as discounting makes the present value of long-term effects extremely sensitive to the discount rate level. However, Polish policymakers have little information on SDR: the predominant practice applies a priori fixed 5% discount rate, while studies devoted only to Poland are quite rare. To eliminate this research gap, our paper aims at estimating SDR for Poland, applicable in energy transition policies. We derive SDR for three datasets varying in length, twofold: using market rates via Consumption Rate of Interest (CRI) and Social Opportunity Cost (SOC) of capital, and prescriptive Ramsey and Gollier approaches based on Social Welfare Function (SWF). The results indicate that the rates based on CRI and SOC deviate substantially with changing data timeframes and market conditions, while prescriptive methods show much higher time stability. Due to long-term planning horizons for energy policies, we argue for adopting, as SDR in Poland, the longest dataset’s Ramsey-based rate of 4.72% which can be reduced to 4.39% by Gollier’s precautionary term (reflecting the uncertainty over future consumption growth), which are our main findings.

Factor Forestry: Pruning using an Economic Chainsaw

Hundreds of anomalies, factors, or characteristic portfolios have been discovered whose risk-return spread is not explained by benchmark empirical factor models. Each of these is a potential candidate as a factor in such models. Efforts to narrow down this plethora of candidates to a parsimonious set has mainly relied on econometric and statistical tools. Standard textbooks, however, emphasize that factors in models proxy for the marginal utility of aggregate consumption growth. Imposing the economic restrictions that this link implies, we find that only 10-20 per cent of this forest of factors impound news about future consumption growth, the low-frequency risk of consumption growth or its extreme tails i.e. bad times. Interestingly, new factors used in models that perform better than the benchmark models do better in passing economically motivated hurdles. Our results imply that imposing theoretical restrictions, on this forest of potential factors can impose discipline, in the search for an ex-post MV efficient portfolios. In addition, applying an economic chainsaw to yet to be discovered anomalies could curb the growth of this forest.

Stock Returns and Monetary Policy Stance

This paper investigates the structural relationships between monetary policy and stock returns. We build an asset pricing model incorporating a standard monetary policy rule into a consumption-CAPM framework. Our model quantitatively explains the negative risk premium of expansionary monetary policy. It also suggests that (expansionary) monetary policy beta is negatively related to covariances of returns with output gap and inflation. In addition, related to the premise of its stabilization role, a hawkish monetary policy stance predicts rises in future consumption growth and inflation. These results are consistent with empirical evidence. Furthermore, we provide theoretical predictions on how the slope of the Phillips curve and the response parameters of monetary policy affect the cross-section of returns.

Leisure and long-run risks: An empirical evaluation on value premium puzzle

I study the ability of a long-run risk model, with nonseparable leisure and consumption, to price the cross-section of U.S. equity returns over the 1948–2015 period. The stochastic discount factor features innovations to future leisure and consumption growth as factors. The model performs well, in terms of a variety of criteria, relative to competing models in explaining the cross-section of the spread in size and value portfolios.

Low Cost Solar Power System with Open Loop Tracking for Rural and Developing Areas

Solar energy continues to enjoy interest and is becoming one of the important elements in the world's future energy consumption and economic growth. One way to increase the use of solar power systems, particularly in rural and developing areas, is through the employment of low cost, power efficient systems. This paper presents a possible low cost solution where an open loop tracking system is implemented with a small size 50 Watt (W) Monocrystalline Photovoltaic (PV) panel. The system’s performance is monitored at different tropical weather conditions. In addition, the output power is measured and compared between a static solar panel and one that includes the proposed tracking system. The measurements over the course of 6 months in Pathum Thani, north of Bangkok (Thailand), showed that the output energy with tracking system, on average, is 18 % higher than with static panel (45 Watt hour (Wh) compared to 36.5 Wh). The overall generated energy in 7 hours in a day are 315 Watt hour per day (Wh/day) and 255 Wh/day for tracking and static panel respectively. On rainy days, the average measured output power is reduced to 25% of that on the sunny days. The experimental results have been compared to those of a deduced first order simulation output and this over a period of five months. The experiment shows similarity in the trend between experimental and simulation results. Finally, multiple sensors were added to the solar unit, and measured environmental data sent obtained by these sensors were over a low bandwidth communication link, and recorded/processed on a remote server.

Aggregate Consumption and Wealth in the Long Run: The Impact of Financial Liberalization

This paper investigates the impact of financial liberalization on the relationship between consumption and total wealth (i.e., the sum of asset wealth and human wealth). Financial liberalization is persistent and may signal changes in expected future consumption growth rates and/or in rates of return on wealth that, through the inter-temporal budget constraint, affect the current consumption-wealth ratio. We estimate the long-run relationship between consumption, total wealth and financial liberalization by state space methods using quarterly US data. The results show that the trend in the consumption-wealth ratio is well-captured by our baseline liberalization indicator. We find that the increase in this indicator over the sample period has increased the consumption-wealth ratio with about ten to sixteen percent. Investigating the responsible channel, additional estimates show that financial liberalization has predictive power for aggregate consumption growth rather than for returns, a result that supports an incomplete markets interpretation of the link between liberalization and the consumption-wealth ratio.

Assessing Macro-Financial Risks of Household Debt in China

High household indebtedness could constrain future consumption growth and increase financial stability risks. This paper uses household survey data to analyze both macroeconomic and finanical stability risks from the rapidly rising household debt in China. We find that rising household indebtedness could boost consumption in the short term, while reducing it in the medium-to-long term. By stress testing households’ debt repayment capacity, we find that low-income households are most vulnerable to adverse income shocks which could lead to signficant defaults. Containing these risks would call for a strengthening of systemic risk assessment and macroprudential policies of the household sector. Other policies include improving the credit registry system and establishing a well-functioning personal insolvency framework.

Consumption growth predictability and asset prices

Abstract We derive and test a consumption-based intertemporal asset pricing model in which an asset earns a risk premium if it performs poorly when expected future consumption growth deteriorates. The predictability of consumption growth combined with the recursive preference delivers news about future consumption growth an additional risk factor, in addition to news about current consumption growth. We model the consumption growth dynamics using a vector autoregressive (VAR) structure with a set of instrumental variables commonly used for forecasting future economic growth. Our VAR estimation provides strong empirical support for future consumption growth predictability. The cross-sectional test shows that the model explains reasonably well the dispersion in average excess returns of 25 portfolios sorted on size and book-to-market, as well as 25 portfolios sorted on size and long-term return reversal. Growth stocks and long-term winners underperform value stocks and long-term losers, respectively, because growth stocks and long-term winners hedge adverse changes in the future consumption growth opportunities.

Assessing Macro-Financial Risks of Household Debt in China

High household indebtedness could constrain future consumption growth and increase financial stability risks. This paper uses household survey data to analyze both macroeconomic and finanical stability risks from the rapidly rising household debt in China. We find that rising household indebtedness could boost consumption in the short term, while reducing it in the medium-to-long term. By stress testing households' debt repayment capacity, we find that low-income households are most vulnerable to adverse income shocks which could lead to signficant defaults. Containing these risks would call for a strengthening of systemic risk assessment and macroprudential policies of the household sector. Other policies include improving the credit registry system and establishing a well-functioning personal insolvency framework.

Does the Stock Market Predict Macro-Variables?

Movements in the stock market should reflect expectations regarding future economic conditions and lead the macroeconomy. However, evidence for stock returns providing such predictive power is mixed. We argue this arises as stock returns are noisy and consider the predictive ability of derived expected returns, as well as, the price-earnings ratio, VIX and the stock/bond return correlation. Results reveal that expected stock returns and the stock/bond return correlation exhibit predictive power for output and consumption growth and inflation at monthly and quarterly frequencies. The VIX has predictive power at the monthly frequency for consumption growth and inflation, while the price-earnings ratio predicts the shape of the future term structure. Results reveal that higher current expected returns are consistent with to higher future output and consumption growth, while greater risk results in lower future economic activity. The results are robust to considerations of structural breaks and alternative variables. Further, expected returns provides a noticeably more accurate recession prediction than realised returns. Thus, while stock returns are a weak predictor, expected returns and alternative proxies for stock market risk do reveal predictive power. Such information provides a leading role indicator for the macroeconomy and reveals links between financial markets and the economy.

The Explanatory Power and the Forecast Performance of Consumer Confidence Indices for Private Consumption Growth in Turkey

ABSTRACTIn this study, we assess empirically whether consumer confidence indices contain information about future private consumption growth in Turkey. To this end, we estimate models for quarterly total, durable, and nondurable consumption growth with and without sentiment indicators. We evaluate in-sample forecasts and one-step-ahead out-of-sample forecasts from recursive ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates. We also test permanent income and precautionary savings hypotheses with our results. We use overall indices of CNBC-e and Turkstat-CBRT Surveys, and Consumer Expectations Index (CEI) and Propensity to Consume Index (PCI) from the CNBC-e Survey as sentiment measures. We show that the lagged values of consumer sentiment have explanatory power on consumption growth. However, when used in conjunction with other economic variables such as real labor income, real stock price, real interest rate, and exchange rate, only CNBC-e for total consumption, and CBRT and PCI for nondurable consumption provide independent information about future consumption growth. Similarly, the gains in out-of-sample forecasts are observed under the absence of other variables and disappear in almost all cases following their inclusion to the estimations. Finally, we find no clear evidence for either precautionary savings motive or permanent income hypothesis on the link between consumer sentiment and future total consumption changes.