Analyzing The Effects Of Financial And Housing Wealth On Consumption Using Micro Data

This paper analyzes the existence of “wealth effects” derived from net equity (in the form of housing, financial assets, and total net worth) on consumption. The study uses longitudinal household-level data?from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) ?covering about 7,000-9,000 households in the U.S., with the estimations carried over the period 1999-2017. Overall, wealth effects are found to be relatively large and significant for housing wealth, but less so for other types of wealth, including stocks. Furthermore, the analysis shows how these estimated marginal propensities to consume (MPC) from wealth are closely linked to household characteristics, including income and demographic factors. Finally, underlying structural changes in household characteristics point to potentially lower aggregate MPCs from wealth going forward.

This study is a contribution to the literature on the link between consumption and wealth (wealth effect). A new source of harmonized micro data (Luxembourg Wealth Study) is used to investigate whether there are differences in wealth effects out of different types of wealth and also across age groups. Three countries are considered: Canada, Italy and Finland.

In this paper, we examine the phenomenon known as the wealth effect and its impact on consumption. By using quarterly data from the United States economy, we investigate the impact of financial and housing wealth on consumption. With variable selection based on a paper by Matteo Iacoviello, and expanding the sample size by including the periods from the first quarter of 1952 to the last quarter of 2016, we found evidence that shows both financial wealth and housing wealth have an impact on consumption. Although the data specifically shows housing wealth had a higher impact, the final results seemed to be somewhat inconclusive because each method of integration had a slightly different outcome. In our basic model using the OLS method of integration consistently showed housing wealth had a larger impact on consumption, while the results of the ARDL and Co-integration estimates varied. These results are in agreement with some of the literature but do not include some of the micro economic variables that might have made the results more conclusive. Finally, we take a look at some of the implications of the wealth effect and how they go past just an increase in consumption.

We re-examine the link between changes in housing wealth, financial wealth, and consumer spending. We extend a panel of U.S. states observed quarterly during the seventeen-year period, 1982 through 1999, to the thirty-one year period, 1978 through 2009. Using techniques reported previously, we impute the aggregate value of owner-occupied housing, the value of financial assets, and measures of aggregate consumption for each of the geographic units over time. We estimate regression models in levels, first differences and in error-correction form, relating per capita consumption to per capita income and wealth. We find a statistically significant and rather large effect of housing wealth upon household consumption. This effect is consistently larger than the effect of stock market wealth upon consumption. This reinforces the conclusions reported in our previous analysis. In contrast to our previous analysis, however, we do find -- based on data which include the recent volatility in asset markets -- that the effects of declines in housing wealth in reducing consumption are at least as large as the effects of increases in housing wealth in increasing the course of household consumption.

Estimates housing wealth effects using the new survey of Spanish Household Finances which contains information on different types of wealth and expenditure, and oversamples wealthy households. Using local house prices and inheritance information from the survey as instruments, identifies a causal effect of housing wealth on consumption.

Households across Europe are struggling with a double crisis—the worst inflation shock since the World War II and a sudden correction in house prices. There is a rich literature on how housing price cycles affect consumer spending, finding mixed results with a wide range of consumption responses to changes in housing wealth. In this paper, using quarterly data on 20 countries in Europe over the period 1980–2023, we analyze the dynamic relationship between inflation-adjusted housing wealth and consumer spending and obtain statistically significant and economically intuitive results. Household consumption responds positively and swiftly to changes in real house prices and gross disposable income as expected. Using the estimated coefficients, we can deduce that the average quarter-on-quarter decline of -1.96 percent in real house prices in the first quarter of 2023 in Europe could dampen consumer spending by about -0.51 percentage points in real terms on a cumulative basis over a horizon of eight quarters.

The objective of this paper is to examine the role of consumer confidence on the relationship between two forms of wealth - housing and financial - and four categories of consumption expenditure. which include total consumption, service, durable goods and nondurable goods consumption. This paper uses U.S. quarterly data from 1978 to 2012 for its analysis. Applying the FMOLS estimation method, the results show that consumer confidence has a positive effect on the association between housing wealth and consumption expenditure, whereas its effect on the association between financial wealth and consumption expenditure is negative. The implications of these results are discussed.

This paper presents a simple new method for estimating the size of 'wealth effects' on aggregate consumption. The method exploits the well-documented sluggishness of consumption growth (often interpreted as 'habits' in the asset pricing literature) to distinguish between short-run and long-run wealth effects. In U.S. data, we estimate that the immediate (next-quarter) marginal propensity to consume from a $1 change in housing wealth is about 2 cents, with a final long-run effect around 9 cents. Consistent with several recent studies, we find a housing wealth effect that is substantially larger than the stock wealth effect. We believe that our approach is preferable to the currently popular cointegration- based estimation methods, because neither theory nor evidence justifies faith in the existence of a stable cointegrating vector.

The wealth effects on consumption are a subject of continuing interest to economists. The conventional wisdom states that fluctuations in household wealth have caused major fluctuations in economic activity. This study analyses the macroeconomic dynamics of wealth effects in India and examines the nexus between the changes in housing wealth, financial wealth, and consumer spending. Using the quarterly data for the period 2005:1-2016:1, I estimate vector autoregression models and vector error-correction models, relating consumption to income and wealth measures. I find a statistically significant and rather large effect of housing wealth upon household consumption. The results show that (i) wealth effects are statistically significant and comparatively substantial in magnitude (ii) housing wealth effects tend to be greater while stock market wealth effects are considerable (iii) private consumption responses to the shocks to housing market wealth are relatively stronger than to the shocks in stock market wealth. There is a bidirectional causality running from private consumption to the two wealth forms and vice versa. Overall, the private consumption expenditure response to the changes in different wealth forms is observed to be substantial and significant.