Reasonable and Risk‐Based? Replacing NFIP Generally Subsidized Rates with a Means‐Tested Subsidy

The National Flood Insurance Program was created to seek two often conflicting goals: (i) shifting risks from federal taxpayers to those who choose to live in flood plains and (ii) ensuring flood insurance is available to everyone at “reasonable” rates. Efforts to accomplish the second goal currently take the form of subsidies based on location and the date a home was constructed. The resulting revenue from subsidized insurance premiums is not sufficient to cover the true cost of flood insurance, and federal taxpayers have paid the difference: $30 billion to date. Based on a detailed survey of households in the high‐risk flood zones of New York City (NYC), we find that replacing existing premium subsidies with risk‐based prices and a subsidy for low‐income housing‐burdened households could better meet both goals by ensuring low‐income individuals have access to affordable flood insurance while still saving the federal taxpayer up to $183 million per year in NYC alone.     

Estimating the impact of farmer field schools in sub‐Saharan Africa: the case of cocoa

This study measures the economic impact of the first phase of the Cocoa Livelihood Program (CLP‐I), a current World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) project, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and aimed at improving the livelihood of over 200,000 small cocoa producers in sub‐Saharan Africa via training, crop diversification, and farmer‐based organizations. Using data collected from 2,048 pre‐ and post‐CLP‐I interviews of cocoa producers in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, and Cameroon, the results show that yield enhancements attributable to CLP‐I are 32%, 34%, 50%, and 62% in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, and Cameroon, respectively. Using a total program cost of $151–$200 per beneficiary and estimated annual benefits of $109–$322 per beneficiary over 25 years, the benefit‐cost ratios are estimated to range from $18 to $62 for every dollar spent on human capital development. These results suggest the WCF should endeavor to increase the number of farmers who receive all, not some, of the components of the program. This would not only help ensure that each producer obtains as much human capital as possible from each of the training programs but increases the probability of reaching the CLP goal of doubling the income of cocoa‐growing households.     

The Impact of the 2008 Crisis on UK Prices: What We Can Learn from the CPI Microdata1

This paper takes the locally collected price quotes used to construct the CPI index in the UK for the period 1996–2013 and explores the impact of the Great Recession (2008‐9) on the pricing behaviour of firms. We develop a time series framework which captures the link between macroeconomic variables and the behaviour of prices in terms of the frequency of price change, the dispersion of price levels and the size, dispersion and kurtosis of price‐growth. We find strong evidence for inflation having an effect, but not output. The change in the behaviour of prices during the Great Recession is largely explained by the changes in inflation and VAT. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the inflation effect is sufficiently small that it need not influence monetary policy.     

Rational expectations for large CGE models: A practical algorithm and a policy application

We describe a simple iterative method for solving large dynamic CGE models under rational expectations. Details are given for Australia's MONASH model but the approach applies to a wide range of CGE models. The method is automated in the RunMONASH Windows software, putting CGE modelling under rational expectations within the reach of non-specialist modellers. We provide an illustrative application in which MONASH results under rational expectations are compared with results under static expectations. The application and supporting software can be downloaded. Results from the application are interpreted in terms of elementary economic mechanisms.     

You can't have a CGE recession without excess capacity

Simulations with dynamic, single country, CGE models typically imply that reductions in domestic demand, e.g. a cut in investment, generate increases in exports and reductions in imports facilitated by real depreciation. However, currently in the U.S. a large reduction in investment is occurring simultaneously with a contraction in exports and little movement in the real exchange rate. We show that to describe this situation it is necessary to drop the standard CGE assumption that capital is always fully employed in every industry. After introducing an excess capacity specification, we simulate the U.S. recession with and without the Obama stimulus package.     

Contract length heterogeneity and the persistence of monetary shocks in a dynamic generalized Taylor economy

We develop the generalized Taylor economy (GTE) in which there are many sectors with overlapping contracts of different lengths. In economies with the same average contract length, monetary shocks will be more persistent when longer contracts are present. Using the Bils–Klenow distribution of contract lengths, we find that the corresponding GTE tracks the U.S. data well. When we choose a GTE with the same distribution of completed contract lengths as the Calvo, the economies behave in a similar manner.     

ω‐Homothetic Preferences: Theory and Applications

This paper develops a new class of homothetic preferences which generate Marshallian demand curves for individual goods which can be concave, convex or linear in own price under the assumption that agents treat aggregate price indices as given (as in Dixit‐Stiglitz, 1977). The preferences are represented by a cost function which has two parameters: one determining the curvature of the Marshallian demand; the other determining the elasticity of demand when all prices are equal. The elasticity of demand varies with relative prices. Illustrative examples are given of Cournot duopoly and exchange rate pass‐through.     

The Cost of Monopoly in Australian Manufacturing

This article looks at the deadweight loss arising from monopoly elements in Australian manufacturing under various assumptions and its relationship with the level of concentration.