Essays in Household Finance and Macroeconomics

This thesis comprises three chapters exploring the interaction between macroeconomic fluctuations and micro-level outcomes. The first chapter examines how Dutch firms transmit business cycle fluctuations to their employees. It finds that differences in firms’ business cycle passthrough largely explain variation in workers’ income risk. Workers with higher income, permanent contracts, or
middle age face lower passthrough, driven mainly by changes in hours rather than wages. Notably, workers are aware of their business cycle exposure and they adjust their financial decisions in response. The second chapter studies how Dutch depositors responded to the introduction of negative interest rates above certain thresholds in 2020. Using transaction data from a major bank, it shows that depositors reduced excess balances by 30-60%, initially by spreading savings across banks. As thresholds fell at all banks, they shifted more toward financial investments and spending, while the role of cash withdrawals is negligible.
The third chapter develops a model of firm competition using continuous-time mean-field games with strategic complementarities. It explores how the intensity of these complementarities affects the existence of multiple equilibria, using numerical simulations to illustrate key dynamics and comparative statics.