Cash-on-Hand and Competing Models of Intertemporal Behavior: New Evidence from the Labor Market

David E. Card, Raj Chetty () and Andrea Weber ()

No 12639, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper presents new tests of the permanent income hypothesis and other widely used models of household behavior using data from the labor market. We estimate the "excess sensitivity" of job search behavior to cash-on-hand using sharp discontinuities in eligibility for severance pay and extended unemployment insurance (UI) benefits in Austria. Analyzing data for over one-half million job losers, we obtain three empirical results: (1) a lump-sum severance payment equal to two months of earnings reduces the job-finding rate by 8-12% on average; (2) an extension of the potential duration of UI benefits from 20 weeks to 30 weeks similarly lowers job-finding rates in the first 20 weeks of search by 5-9%; and (3) increases in the duration of search induced by the two programs have little or no effect on subsequent job match quality. Using a search theoretic model, we show that estimates of the relative effect of severance pay and extended benefits can be used to calibrate and test a wide set of intertemporal models. Our estimates of this ratio are inconsistent with the predictions of a standard permanent income model, as well as naive "rule of thumb" behavior. The representative job searcher in our data is 70% of the way between the permanent income benchmark and credit-constrained behavior in terms of sensitivity to cash-on-hand.

JEL-codes: D91 E6 H5 J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv, nep-mac and nep-pbe
Date: 2006-10
Note: AG EFG LS PE
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12639.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Journal Article: Cash-On-Hand and Competing Models of Intertemporal Behavior: New Evidence from the Labor Market (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12639

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12639
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().