Associate Professor Luigi Pistaferri

We show the extent of errors made in the award of disability insurance using matched survey-administrative data. False rejections (Type I errors) are widespread, and there are large gender differences in these type I error rates.

The 1996 PRWORA reform introduced time limits on the receipt of welfare in the United States.

In this essay, we discuss the importance of consumption inequality in the debate concerning the measurement of disparities in economic well-being.

This paper examine the link between wage and consumption inequality using a life-cycle model incorporating consumption and family labor supply decisions.

The authors consider the life-cycle problem of a household that in each period decides how much to consume and how to allocate spouses’ time to work, leisure, and childcare.

This paper contributes to the debate regarding trends in consumption inequality in the United States. The authors present a new measure of consumption inequality based on the redesigned 1999–2011 PSID.

In this paper we examine the link between wage inequality and consumption inequality using a life cycle model that incorporates household consumption and family labor supply decisions.

This paper uses various techniques to look for accurate measurements of trends in consumption inequality as well as income inequality.

We specify a life-cycle model of consumption, labor supply and job mobility in an economy with search frictions. We distinguish different sources of risk, including shocks to productivity, job arrival, and job destruction. Allowing for job mobility has a large effect on the estimate of productivity risk. Increases in the latter impose a considerable welfare loss. Increases in employment risk have large effects on output and, primarily through this channel, affect welfare. The welfare value of programs such as Food Stamps, partially insuring productivity risk, is greater than the value of unemployment insurance which provides (partial) insurance against employment risk.

This paper provides a life-cycle framework for weighing up the insurance value of disability benefits against the incentive cost.

This paper discusses recent developments in the literature that studies how the dynamics of earnings and wages affect consumption choices over the life cycle.

We specify a structural life-cycle model of consumption, labour supply and job mobility in an economy with search frictions that allows us to distinguish between different sources of risk and to estimate their effects.

This paper describes the transmission of income inequality into consumption inequality and in so doing investigates the degree of insurance to income shocks.

This paper decomposes the sources of risk to income that individuals face over their lifetimes.

This paper describes the transmission of income inequality into consumptioninequality and in so doing investigates the degree of insurance to incomeshocks.

This paper assesses the accuracy of decomposing income risk into permanent and transitory components using income and consumption data.

Recent theoretical work has shown the importance of measuring microeconomic uncertainty for models of both general and partial equilibrium under imperfect insurance.