Fact-check: The article accurately describes NBER Working Paper w34891 by Sasha Indarte, Raymond Kluender, Ulrike Malmendier, and Michael Stepner, confirmed via NBER's official site and recent publications. NBER's X account posted about the paper on March 2, 2026, promoting its 'consumption wedges' approach using transaction data and expectations, matching the summary. No contradictions; fully verified and discussed in real-time on X.
Consumption Wedges: Measuring and Diagnosing Distortions -- by Sasha Indarte, Raymond Kluender, Ulrike Malmendier, Michael Stepner
A new academic working paper by researchers from Wharton, MIT, UC Berkeley, and University of Toronto develops a 'sufficient-statistics' framework to measure individual-level consumption wedges — deviations from frictionless optimal consumption — using administrative transactions data linked to surveyed expectations for middle-income, low-liquidity US consumers. The study finds consumption wedges are large and heterogeneous, with a median wedge of 40% of frictionless consumption, and concludes t