The Effect of Liquidity Constraints on Consumption: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

This paper examines the effect of liquidity constraints on consumption expenditures using a single-time cross-section data set. A reduced-form equation for consumption is estimated on high-saving households by the Tobit procedure to account for the selectivity bias. Since high-saving households are not likely to be liquidity constrained, the estimated equation is an appropriate description of how desired consumption dictated by the life cycle-permanent income hypothesis is related to the variables available in the cross-section data. When the reduced-form equation is used to predict desired consumption, the gap between desired consumption and measured consumption is most evident for young households.