Thesis
Essays on household behaviour in macroeconomic models
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2024
- Thesis identifier
- T17031
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 202052743
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- Economists are deeply interested in the drivers of nations’ welfare, at least in part so they can advise policymakers on maximising it. A key component of welfare is household wellbeing. Therefore, having a complete understanding of household behaviour and how it responds to the economic environment helps economists develop better policy advice to maximise welfare and shape the world around us. Yet while Sisyphus’ eternal punishment was to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, economists’ punishment is the knowledge that our recommendations will always be built on assumptions and models which are abstractions from reality. Whereas physicists estimate the coefficient of gravity with a high level of certainty, economists will always be constrained in their inferences by shortages of reliable counterfactuals, data limitations and statistical uncertainty. Although this may dissuade some from conducting or trusting economic analysis, unlike Sisyphus’ eternal journey, our eternal journey is not fruitless. Each development in economic thought improves and provokes our understanding of the world around us and, therefore, enables us to enhance the wellbeing of households through better policy recommendations. With this philosophy in mind, this thesis seeks to improve our understanding of the world by developing and applying methods to capture household decisions and behaviours more accurately. Household decisions and behaviours are the central theme of this thesis as these are likely to have very large impacts on aggregate wellbeing. Indeed, households’ consumption accounts for most of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Moreover, households’ labour market choices and savings decisions directly influence an economy’s production capacity. Although economists have developed advanced theories and methods to estimate household consumption, saving, and labour market behaviour, we must keep pushing the boulder up the infinite hill to improve our knowledge, improving policy recommendations and increasing our ability to improve household wellbeing.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Figus, Gioele
- Dickson, Alex
- Resource Type
- DOI
- Funder
Relations
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PDF of thesis T17031 | 2024-08-06 | Public | Download |