Winfried Koeniger
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Prof. Dr.
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Koeniger
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Winfried
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winfried.koeniger@unisg.ch
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+41 71 224 23 09
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Monitoring consumption Switzerland: data, background, and use cases

2023-03-20 , Brown, Martin , Fengler, Matthias , Huwyler, Jonas , Koeniger, Winfried , Lalive, Rafael , Rohrkemper, Robert

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Buffer-Stock Saving and Households’ Response to Income Shocks

2020-08 , Fella, Giulio , Frache, Serafin , Koeniger, Winfried

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Debt Portfolios and Homestead Exemptions

2016-10 , Hintermaier, Thomas , Koeniger, Winfried

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On the Evolution of the US Consumer Wealth Distribution

2011-04 , Hintermaier, Thomas , Koeniger, Winfried

We use all available waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances to document the evolution of the wealth distribution in the US since the 1980s. Relying on the shape of this distribution we then estimate a life-cycle incomplete markets model. We find that considering a wide range of net worth percentiles for prime-age consumers between ages 26 and 55 delivers very precise estimates of the structural parameters, impatience and risk aversion. The estimated model captures how average net worth increases with age while the dispersion of net worth falls with age. The model also predicts some of the evolution of the net worth distribution since the 1980s. Feeding the observed higher labor income risk into the model increases precautionary savings while the higher experience premium of labor earnings reduces wealth accumulation. Quantitatively, these two forces imply that the model reproduces the stable average net worth for young consumers since the 1980s and the increasing dispersion of net worth for all prime-age consumers, while the model does not predict the observed increase of average net worth for older consumers between ages 46 and 55.

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On the Transmission of Monetary Policy to the Housing Market

2022 , Koeniger, Winfried , Lennartz, Benedikt , Ramelet, Marc-Antoine

We provide empirical evidence on the heterogeneous transmission of monetary policy to the housing market across and within countries. We use household-level data from Germany, Italy and Switzerland together with the respective monetary policy shocks identified from high-frequency data. We find that the pass-through of monetary policy shocks to rates of newly originated (fixed-rate) mortgages is twice as strong in Switzerland than in Germany and Italy. After an accommodative monetary policy shock, this is associated in the housing market with a larger immediate, and persistent increase of transitions from renting to owning; a stronger decrease in rents; and an increase of the price-rent ratio. Within Italy, we find a stronger pass-through to mortgage rates, housing tenure transitions and the price-rent ratio in the northern regions that have been characterized in the literature as more financially developed than the southern regions.

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Household Debt and Crises of Confidence

2018-11-28 , Hintermaier, Thomas , Koeniger, Winfried

This paper develops a notion of consumer confidence within a dynamic competitive equilibrium framework. In any situation where multiple equilibrium prices on next-period spot markets are equally supported by the state of the economy, confidence is encoded in the subjective probabilities consumers attach to these multiple future outcomes. Our approach characterizes the set of all equilibrium-consistent subjective probabilities, and thereby endogenizes the extent of uncertainty faced by consumers. We use the structure of an economy with collateralized household debt and housing markets to develop and illustrate this concept. Our approach determines the specific range of debt levels at which this economy is vulnerable to crises of confidence, as well as the debt-level-specific extent of confidence-driven house price fluctuations.

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Hidden Insurance in a Moral-Hazard Economy

2015-10-26 , Bertola, Giuseppe , Koeniger, Winfried

We analyze the general equilibrium of an economy in which a competitive industry produces nonexclusive insurance services. The equilibrium is inefficient because insurance contracts cannot control moral hazard, and welfare can be improved by policies that reduce insurance by increasing its price above marginal cost. We discuss how insurance production costs that exceed expected claim payments interact with moral hazard in determining the equilibrium's inefficiency, and show that these costs can make insurance premia so actuarially unfair as to validate the standard first-order conditions we exploit in our analysis.

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Opportunity and Inequality across Generations

2022-04 , Koeniger, Winfried , Zanella, Carlo

We analyze how intergenerational mobility and inequality would change relative to the status quo if dynasties had access to optimal insurance against low ability of future generations. Based on a dynamic, dynastic Mirrleesian model, we find that insurance against intergenerational ability risk increases in the social optimum relative to the status quo. This implies less intergenerational mobility in terms of welfare but no quantitatively significant change in earnings mobility. Earnings mobility is thus similar across economies with different incentives and welfare, illustrating that changes in earnings mobility cannot be interpreted readily in welfare terms without further analysis.

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Human Capital and Optimal Redistribution

2018-01 , Koeniger, Winfried , Prat, Julien

We characterize optimal redistribution in a dynastic economy with observable human capital and hidden ability. We show that the wedge between human capital investment in the laissez faire and the social optimum differs from the wedge for bequests because (i) returns to human capital are risky, and (ii) human capital may change informational rents. We compute the optimal allocation when ability is persistent across generations, as calibrated for the U.S. We show how the allocation can be implemented with student loans featuring contingent repayments. The quantitative results reveal that human capital investment should (i) increase in parental income because of ability transmission across generations, but (ii) decrease in inherited assets because of the negative effect of wealth on labor supply.

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On the Validity of the First-Order Approach with Moral Hazard and Hidden Assets

2014-09 , Bertola, Giuseppe , Koeniger, Winfried

With moral hazard and anonymous asset trade, first-order conditions need not characterize effort and portfolio choices. The standard procedure for establishing validity of the first-order approach in economies with one hidden asset is not fruitful when multiple assets are hidden.

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