Corporate retentions and consumers' expenditure

Corporate retained profits have well-determined effects on both total and non-durable consumers' expenditure, with coefficients which do not differ significantly from those on disposable income in a standard consumption function; the effects also appear in a life-cycle model which excludes disposable income. Retentions convey no useful information about future values of the other arguments of either consumption function. The implications of an alternative explanatory hypothesis, of a discrepancy between the principles and practice of national accounting, are not rejected.