A note on the cointegration of consumption, income, and wealth

Jeremy Rudd and Karl Whelan ()

Open Access publications from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: Lettau and Ludvigson (2001) argue that a log-linearized approximation to an aggregate budget constraint predicts that log consumption, assets, and labour income will be cointegrated. They conclude that this cointegrating relationship is present in U.S. data, and that the estimated cointegrating residual forecasts future asset growth. This note examines whether the cointegrating relationship suggested by Lettau and Ludvigson's theoretical framework actually exists. We demonstrate that we cannot reject the hypothesis that cointegration is absent from the data once we employ measures of consumption, assets, and labor income that are jointly consistent with an underlying budget constraint. By contrast, Lettau and Ludvigson use a set of variables that do not belong together in an aggregate budget constraint, thereby testing a cointegrating relationship that is not implied by their theory.

Keywords: Cointegration; Consumption (Economics); Income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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http://hdl.handle.net/10197/228 Open Access version, 2002 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: A Note on the Cointegration of Consumption, Income, and Wealth (2002)
Working Paper: A note on the cointegration of consumption, income, and wealth (2002)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucn:oapubs:10197/228

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