Wealth Heterogeneity and the Marginal Propensity to Consume out of Wealth

Bertrand Garbinti, Pierre Lamarche and Frédérique Savignac

Working papers from Banque de France

Abstract: We provide detailed estimates of how the marginal propensity to consume out of wealth (MPC) varies along the distribution of household wealth and by asset composition, and analyse the sources of MPC heterogeneity across euro area countries. To do this, we i) build a household-level panel dataset combining wealth and consumption surveys for five European countries, and ii) use instrumented household-level panel regressions. First, we find heterogeneity across the wealth distribution with lower MPCs for high-wealth households. Second, we account for asset composition and show the significant role of housing wealth in all countries. We show that our results are indicative of a collateral channel. Third, cross-country differences in MPCs are mostly explained by country-specific institutional and socio-economic characteristics in Germany (compared to Spain) and by differences in consumption behaviours for Belgium, Cyprus and Italy. We show that MPC heterogeneity is related to homeownership rates, mortgage markets, demographics, and wealth inequality. Finally, we investigate to what extent heterogeneous MPC and wealth inequality affect consumption inequality.

Keywords: Marginal Propensity to Consume out of Wealth; Collateral Channel; Household Surveys (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D12 E21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 89 pages
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.banque-france.fr/system/files/2024-09/WP962.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Wealth Heterogeneity and the Marginal Propensity to Consume out of Wealth (2024)
Working Paper: Wealth Heterogeneity and the Marginal Propensity to Consume out of Wealth (2024)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bfr:banfra:962

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Banque de France Banque de France 31 Rue Croix des Petits Champs LABOLOG - 49-1404 75049 PARIS. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael brassart ().