ACCESS,ALLOCATION AND TRANSFERS IN COUNCIL HOUSING:

The authors of this paper consider current practices in respect of access, allocation and transfer in public sector housing.     

The Cost of Inaccurate Consumer Information: The Case of the EPA Mileage Figures

The EPA fuel economy estimates for automobiles are an important instrument of public policy and are widely publicized. However, the accuracy of these figures, for use by consumers as an estimate of actual on-the-road mileage, has come under increasing challenge. Consumers Union provides alternative fuel efficiency estimates for the cars it tests, based on actual on-the-road driving. This study calculates the costs of in-accuracies in the EPA's Estimated Mileage, assuming consumers use those figures in making their automobile purchase decisions, but in actual driving achieve mileage equivalent to the Consumers Union's figures. The economic impact includes potentially large unanticipated additional expenditures on gasoline by consumers and in a few cases unexpected gasoline savings; also included is a net social welfare loss due to allocative error. This loss provides a measure of the gains to society obtainable from improvements in the reliability of the EPA estimates as a source of mileage information for consumers.     

Alternative Methods for Solving Heterogeneous Firm Models

I implement and compare five solution methods for a benchmark heterogeneous firms model with lumpy capital adjustment and aggregate uncertainty. The Krusell–Smith algorithm performs best within a group of methods using projection in the aggregate states. Another technique, Parameterization plus Perturbation, is much faster and performs best within a group of methods using perturbation in aggregates. However, projection and perturbation have nonoverlapping strengths and weaknesses. I highlight the resulting trade‐offs with several model extensions. I recommend that researchers apply projection methods to cases with large shocks or nonlinear dynamics, while cases with explicitly distributional channels at work favor perturbation.     

Time Variation in the Inflation Passthrough of Energy Prices

From Bayesian estimates of a vector autoregression that allows for both coefficient drift and stochastic volatility, we obtain the following three results. First, beginning in approximately 1975, the responsiveness of core inflation to changes in energy prices in the United States fell rapidly and remains muted. Second, this decline in the passthrough of energy inflation to core prices has been sustained through a recent period of markedly higher volatility of shocks to energy inflation. Finally, reduced energy inflation passthrough has persisted in the face of monetary policy that became less responsive to energy inflation starting around 1985.