文档介绍：Do Consumers React to Anticipated e Changes? Evidence from the Alaska Permanent Fund By C HANG -T AI H SIEH * A central implication of the life-cycle/permanent- e hypothesis (LC/PIH) is that consumers should not respond to predictable changes in their e. 1To test this hypothesis, a number of recent papers have exploited natural experi- ments to identify anticipated e changes. 2 In particular, recent work by Parker (1999) uses the change in after-tax e due to the cap on earnings subject to the Social Security tax, and a related paper by Souleles (1999) examines the response of consumption to e tax refunds. Surprisingly, Parker and Souleles ?nd that even when e is expected to change within the year, expenditure is excessively sensitive to the timing of the e change. While their results can be interpreted as evidence that our canoni- cal model of consumption is inadequate, an alternative explanation is that the anticipated e changes they exploit are small and ir- regular, and that households will not bother to change their consumption paths when - putational costs involved are large relative to the utility gains. In support of this interpreta- tion, Browning and Collado (2001) ?nd that the seasonal consumption patterns of Spanish households that work in sectors that provide regular bonus payments do not differ from those of households that do not receive bonus paper