OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Abstract:
20% of U.S. households are \wealthy hand-to-mouth” who hold only illiquid assets. But why should they do so, since higher-yielding liquid assets are available? To rationalize this behavior, we build a life-cycle model with non-standard preferences: households are tempted to consume their liquid assets, and therefore purchase housing as a savings commitment device. As a result, households choose to be \wealthy hand-to-mouth” to obtain the \commitment benet” from housing. The model matches the fraction of hand-to-mouth households, rationalizes the heterogeneity in the marginal propensity to consume, and is consistent with micro evidence that households achieve higher savings through homeownership, none of which traditional models can explain.
