前景理论可以解释居民消费吗?

Can Prospect Theory Explain People’s Consumption Behavior?

本文从理论和实证层面考察了前景理论中的参考点依赖偏好对消费的影响。理论分析结果表明,具有参考点依赖偏好的消费者,其最优消费会随着相对损失的扩大而增加。基于中国家庭金融调查2013年和2015年的面板数据,本文进一步检验了这一理论假说。实证结果发现,个体在消费决策中会以期望收入作为参考点,期望收入与实际收入之差形成的相对损失每扩大1万元,总消费将增长1.6个百分点,平均消费倾向将增长3.6个百分点。进一步的分析表明,损失厌恶和风险偏好是消费决策具有参考点依赖特征的内在机制,一方面,实际收入低于期望收入会激励个体增加消费来弥补相对损失产生的负效用;另一方面,实际收入低于期望收入会使个体偏好风险而呈现出凸的效用函数,这使得增加消费可以获得更高的边际效用。最后,本文还发现,高学历的年轻女性消费者具有更强的参考点依赖偏好特征。本文为边际消费倾向递减假说提供了一个新的证据支撑,即低收入群体具有较高边际消费倾向的一个重要原因是由于其实际收入低于参考点而具有较强的消费动机。

This paper studies whether reference dependent preference in prospect theory can explain consumption theoretically and empirically. We find that, theoretically, optimal consumption will increase as the expected reference point increases. Using data from China Household Finance Survey, we test this theoretical hypothesis and find that people use expected income as the reference point in consumption decisions. The difference between expected income and actual income increase by 10000 Yuan, consumption, especially subsistence consumption, will increase by 1.6 percent and the average propensity to consume will increase by 3.6 percent. Further studies show that loss aversion and risk preference are two reasons why people have reference dependent preference. On the one hand, when the actual income is lower than the expected income, people will experience relative losses, which will encourage people to increase consumption to make up for the negative utility of the relative loss. On the other hand, when the actual income is lower than the expected income, people will prefer risk and their utility function will be convex, which makes marginal utility increase as consumption increases. Lastly, we find that women who are young and with high education have strong reference dependent preference. This paper provides new evidence for the hypothesis of diminishing marginal propensity to consume(MPC), that is, one of the reason why low-income groups have higher MPC is that they experience relative loss of income.