中国通货膨胀的福利成本研究

Inflation is always an important indicator to measure whether economy is stable and healthy. This paper provides a substantive survey of the research on the welfare cost of inflation, and uses the methods of consumer’s surplus and neo-classical general equilibrium models respectively to estimate the welfare cost of inflation in China. The results show that high inflation will cause huge welfare cost in China, so keeping low inflation is beneficial to the entire economic welfare of China. __________ Translated from Jingji Yanjiu 经济研究 (Economic Research Journal), 2007, (4): 30–42, 159     

On requiring the durable goods monopolist to sell

Requiring a monopolist to sell its output (rather than renting it) my lead to beneficial output adjustments or harmful quality adjustments. In a durable goods model, we show that requiring sales decreases welfare in only a small fraction of cases, but it strictly increases welfare in a majority of cases.     

Individual contribution to public goods

This letter presents an attempt to provide a theoretically satisfactory rationale for expecting free-riding, in the presence of public goods, to be less extensive than the pure theory might suggest.     

Effect of ageing on the ownership of durable goods

I analyse how ageing affects the demand for non‐housing durable goods. Based on the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, individual characteristics, cohort and time effects can explain most of the age variation in the ownership and purchase of durable goods. A life‐cycle model is derived to capture the complex relation between ageing and the demand for non‐housing durable goods. Decreasing survival probability, deteriorating health and changing preferences are jointly reflected in the age gradient of demand. Simulations indicate that higher chances of survival increase the ownership ratio of the durable items.     

Notes on “The welfare cost of permanent inflation and optimal short-run economic policy”

Zusammenfassung M. Feldstein evaluiert Wohlfahrtsverluste infolge Inflation durch eine Erweiterung des Ansatzes von M. Friedman. Der von Friedman berechnete Wohlfahrtsverlust wächst bei vollständig antizipierter Inflation mit der Wachstumsrate des BIP. Soferne diese Wachstumsrate über dem Zinssatz für sichere Anlagen liegt, ist der abdiskontierte ewige Wohlfahrtsverlust unendlich. Eine Bekämpfung von Arbeitslosigkeit durch inflationäre Maßnahmen führt daher zu Wohlfahrtsverlusten. Gezeigt wird, daß, erstens, auch wenn diese Wohlfahrtsverluste unendlich sind, sie dennoch nicht groß sind; zweitens, daß auch die Wohlfahrtsverluste infolge endlich dauernder Arbeitslosigkeit unendlich sein könen; und drittens, daß das von Feldstein entwickelte Maß des Wohlfahrtsverlustes nur für den Fall der vollständig antizipierten Inflation gilt.     

The welfare loss associated to characteristics of the goods: application to housing policy

The subsidies in kind aimed at heterogeneous goods do not merely generate the traditional excess burden: there is an alternative welfare loss as the distortion also affects non-price characteristics of the good. The reason is that the beneficiary of this type of subsidy has to consume a good with some given characteristics which do not necessarily agree with his choice in the market. The welfare loss analysed here tries to overcome the lack of a correct measure of excess burden in the situations indicate above. Therefore, the paper constitutes an empirical novelty in the theory of excess burden. Moreover, we provide empirical evidence of the welfare loss after estimating a hedonic price model and using predicted prices in a quadratic almost ideal demand system for housing characteristics. The new excess burden is computed under standard assumptions from the theory of rationing. We identify the sources of the losses and we also provide a monetary measure suggesting that, under plausible parameter values, it can be quantitatively high.     

A micro-analytic threshold model for the timing of first purchases of durable goods

A micro-analytic threshold model to describe the timing of household purchases of consumer durable goods is developed and tested. The model incorporates unobserved heterogeneity via a generalized gamma distribution and accounts for time varying covariates. Further, we employ estimation methods applicable or purchase data observed at periodic intervals of time. The model outperforms other competing models for predicting the timing of purchase of durable goods in terms of fit and predictive ability. In particular, this model outperforms the logit model and the diffusion model. The generalized gamma timing model predicts well the time to purchase the durable good; we show how it can be employed for micro-segmentation of households. Several research directions and applications are described.     

Reconsidering the welfare cost of inflation in the US: a nonparametric estimation of the nonlinear long-run money-demand equation using projection pursuit regressions

This paper, first, estimates the appropriate, log–log or semi-log, linear long-run money-demand relationship capturing the behavior US money demand over the period of 1980:Q1–2010:Q4, using the standard linear cointegration procedures found in the literature, and the corresponding nonparametric version of the same based on projection pursuit regression (PPR) methods. We then, compare the resulting welfare costs of inflation obtained from the linear and nonlinear money-demand cointegrating equations. We make the following observations: (i) the appropriate money-demand relationship for the period of 1980:Q1–2010:Q4 is captured by a semi-log function; (ii) based on the estimation of semi-log cointegrating equations, the welfare cost of inflation was found to at the most lie between 0.0131 % of GDP and 0.2186 % of GDP for inflation rates between 0 and 10 %, and; (iii) in comparison, the welfare cost of inflation obtained from the semi-log non-linear long-run money-demand function, derived using the PPR method, for 0–10 % of inflation ranges between 0.4930 and 1.9468 % of GDP. However, the standard errors associated with the welfare cost estimates obtained from PPR relative to the linear models tend to indicate that the nonlinear money demand provides more precise estimates of the welfare costs primarily for higher rates of inflation.     

Measuring the cost of children

"The purpose of this paper is to present a survey and synthesis of those economic models that have been used to derive estimates of marginal child costs from cross-sectional data on household expenditure patterns [in Australia].... In the next section the argument that the 'costs of children' should not be a concern of social policy is considered (and rejected). Section III then summarises the models.... In Section IV an Engel curve system estimated from the 1988-89 Household Expenditure Survey is used to compare [the models].... In the concluding section some directions for further research and data collection strategies are discussed."     

The welfare cost of banking regulation

The Basel Accords promote the adoption of capital adequacy requirements to increase the banking sector's stability. Unfortunately, this type of regulation can hamper economic growth by shifting banks' portfolios from more productive, risky investment projects toward less productive but safer projects. This paper introduces banking regulation in an overlapping-generations model and studies how it affects economic growth, banking sector stability, and welfare. In this model, a banking crisis is initiated by an aggregated shock (in the risky sector) in a banking system with implicit bailout, and banking regulation is modeled as a constraint on the maximal share of banks' portfolios that can be allocated to risky assets. This model allows us to evaluate quantitatively the key trade-off, inherent in this type of regulation, between ensuring banking stability and fostering economic growth. The model implies an optimal level of regulation that prevents crises but at the same time is detrimental to growth. We find that the overall effect of optimal regulation on social welfare is positive when productivity shocks are sufficiently high (for example, in the subprime banking crisis episode) and economic agents are sufficiently risk-averse. Finally, we find that there is a trade-off between regulating the economy upfront (i.e. before the shock) and facing the challenge of making a huge bailout after the crisis.     

Serial cost sharing of excludable public goods: general cost functions

Summary. A group of individuals meet to share the cost and determine output allocations of a partial-excludable public good. We demonstrate that, for general cost functions and preferences that satisfy the Spence-Mirlees sorting condition, the serial cost-sharing formula (Moulin, 1994) has remarkable incentive properties. First, a direct economic mechanism that uses the serial formula is coalition strategy-proof, envy-free and satisfies the stand-alone property. Second, the serial mechanism involves partial exclusion, which is important for the reduction of the free-rider problem. Received: June 10, 1996; revised version; February 11, 1997     

International migration,non-traded goods and economic welfare in the source country

"This paper examines the economic effects of emigration in a source country producing both traded and non-traded commodities. It is shown that, even if the economy faces fixed terms of trade, emigration can still affect the welfare of the non-migrants, and the direction of the effect in this context will always be negative." The focus is on migration from developing countries.     

The cost of inflation: A mechanism design approach

I apply mechanism design to quantify the cost of inflation that can be attributed to monetary frictions alone. In an environment with pairwise meetings, the money demand that is consistent with an optimal, incentive feasible allocation takes the form of a continuous correspondence that can fit the data over the period 1900–2006. For such parameterizations, the cost of moderate inflation is zero. This result is robust to the introduction of match-specific heterogeneity and endogenous participation decisions.     

Threshold cointegration and nonlinear adjustment between goods and services inflation in the United States

In this paper, we model the long-run relationship between goods and services inflation for the United States over the period 1968:1–2003:3. Our empirical methodology makes use of recent developments on threshold cointegration that consider the possibility of a nonlinear relationship between the two inflation series. According to our results, the null hypothesis of linear cointegration would be rejected in favor of a two-regime threshold cointegration model. Consequently, we could expect a cointegrating relationship only when the divergence between services inflation and goods inflation is above the threshold point estimate.     

A long-run,short-run,and politico-economic analysis of the welfare costs of inflation

The long-run, short-run, and politico-economic welfare implications of inflation are assessed in a Bewley model of money demand. All agents produce and consume every period, and hold money to self-insure against idiosyncratic risk. The model is calibrated so the equilibrium monetary distribution shares features with US data. The long-run welfare costs of inflation are shown to be large because inflation reduces the ability of money to mitigate risk. However, the beneficial redistributive effect of inflation is magnified along the short-run transition and reduces the overall costs. These short-run benefits result in a majority-rule inflation rate above the Friedman Rule.     

Consumer preferences,the demand for Divisia money,and the welfare costs of inflation

This paper uses neoclassical demand theory to calculate the welfare costs of inflation. It considers the demand interactions between money, consumption goods, and leisure, relaxes the assumption of fixed consumer preferences, and addresses the inter-related problems of estimation of money demand functions, instability of money demand relations, and monetary aggregation. It makes full use of the relevant economic theory and econometrics and generates inference in terms of long-run welfare costs of inflation that is internally consistent with the data and models used.     

Portfolio choice,consumption and welfare when rates of return are related to prices of consumer goods

This paper generalizes the two period model of portfolio selection under uncertainty by decomposing the aggregate consumption in each period into several goods, the prices of some of which are positively related to rates of return on some assets. The effect of these relations on the choice of portfolio is analyzed. The effects on the chosen portfolio of a lateral translation and of a mean preserving increase in the risk of the distributions of the random variables are analyzed. A generalization of the Hicks compensation to the case where the prices of consumer goods are positively related to rates of return on assets is offered and welfare implications are drawn.