Research Discussion Paper – RDP 9209 Financial Liberalisation and Consumption Behaviour
September 1992
Abstract
The paper addresses the question of whether financial liberalisation and innovation have significantly altered consumption behaviour by reducing liquidity constraints as capital markets have become more flexible. A consumption model in which the permanent income hypothesis and extreme Keynesian consumption functions are nested as special cases is the starting point for this analysis. Estimated values for the sensitivity of consumption to current income for different time periods and for several OECD countries are assessed and compared in the light of various econometric properties, country-specific liberalisation measures and a variety of proxies reflecting changing liquidity constraints.