Abstract
© 2018 American Economic Association. 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.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-35 |
Journal | American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics |
Volume | 10 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2018 |