Consumption smoothing in the working-class households of interwar Japan
General Economics
2024-02-27 v9 Economics
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Abstract
I analyze factory worker households in the early 1920s in Osaka to examine idiosyncratic income shocks and consumption. Using the household-level monthly panel dataset, I find that while households could not fully cope with idiosyncratic income shocks at that time, they mitigated fluctuations in indispensable consumption during economic hardship. In terms of risk-coping mechanisms, I find suggestive evidence that savings institutions helped mitigate vulnerabilities and that both using borrowing institutions and adjusting labor supply served as risk-coping strategies among households with less savings.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.1807.05737,
title = {Consumption smoothing in the working-class households of interwar Japan},
author = {Kota Ogasawara},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.05737},
year = {2024}
}