财富积累、习惯、偏好改变、不确定性与家庭消费决策

Wealth Accumulation,Habits,Preference Changes,Uncertainty and Consumption Decisions

在本文中，我们建立了一个相当一般的分析家庭消费与储蓄跨期优化决策问题的理论框架。使用综合了家庭的当期消费、消费习惯、财富积累、偏好改变多种作用影响的效用函数，在家庭劳动收入具有不确定性的情况下，我们导出了家庭消费与储蓄跨期优化决策问题的闭式解，给出了家庭消费函数和欧拉方程的解析式。使用中国农村居民的住户调查数据对理论模型中导出的欧拉方程进行估计的结果表明，除了收入和家庭财富以外，消费习惯和预防性储蓄动机确实也都是影响我国农村居民家庭的消费与储蓄决策的重要因素。

In this paper, we build a general theoretical framework to explain the consumption and saving behavior of economic agents. Under a utility function featuring consumption, habits, wealth accumulation and preference changes, we derive closed-form solutions for consumption and Euler equations under uncertainty. We estimate the Euler equation using data from a rural household survey in China for the period 1980--2006. Our results suggest that both habits and precautionary motives, in addition to labor income and wealth, play important roles in consumption decisions.