Estimates Of Welfare Costs Research Articles

On the Instability of Long‐Run Money Demand and the Welfare Cost of Inflation in the United States

AbstractWe evaluate the policy implications of measuring the welfare cost of inflation accounting for instabilities in the long‐run money demand for the United States over the period 1900–2013. We extend the analysis and reassess the results reported in Lucas (2000) and Ireland (2009), also considering the recent theoretical contributions of Lucas and Nicolini (2015) and Berentsen, Huber, and Marchesiani (2015). Breaks in the long‐run money demand give rise to regime‐dependent welfare cost estimates. We find that the welfare cost is about 0.1% of annual income over 1976–2013, as compared to 0.8% over 1945–75. Overall, these values are substantially lower than those reported in the literature.

Qualitative and Quantitative Evidence on the True Local Welfare Costs of Forest Conservation in Madagascar: Are Discrete Choice Experiments a Valid ex ante Tool?

Summary Protected areas may impose local welfare costs through the enforcement of use restrictions. Predicting their welfare impacts before their establishment could help with the design of compensation schemes. Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are increasingly used for ex ante evaluations but their validity is largely untested in low-income settings. Using a case study of a new REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) project in eastern Madagascar, we explore the validity of DCEs in two ways: (i) whether the estimates of welfare costs derived from DCE are affected by respondents’ prior experience of conservation (ii) whether DCE results have high theoretical and content validity. We surveyed households who have varying degrees of experience of restrictions to swidden agriculture. We also qualitatively debriefed a sub-sample of respondents to better understand their thought processes. Latent class analysis shows that DCE outcomes vary with conservation experience. Households more experienced with forest protection are less willing to trade-off rights to clear forest for swidden agriculture with any compensatory interventions whereas less experienced households highly favor support for alternative agricultural techniques and a secure right to clear one hectare of forest. Although the results show apparent non-attendance to some attributes (e.g., cash payments), qualitative debriefings suggest that respondents infact do expect relatively low or no utility from the given attributes and hence have theoretically valid preferences. Similarly, the DCE has generally high content validity. Although DCE can elicit current preferences in this context, using ex ante DCE to estimate the welfare costs of such a long-term intervention requires caution. We conclude that it is difficult to robustly estimate compensation in advance of an intervention, there is therefore a need to rethink conservation approaches, and the feasibility of achieving fair compensations for conservation-imposed restrictions.

The behavior of money demand in the Chinese hyperinflation

In this paper I study the behavior of money demand during the episode of hyperinflation that occurred in China after World War II. I consider two popular and competing money demand specifications – the log–log and the semi-log – and show that the log–log performs better than the semi-log in its ability to track the behavior of the money demand. The choice between the two specifications is of great importance, as it implies that welfare cost estimates are very different for hyperinflation. The findings also contribute to the understanding of Cagan’s paradox and the failure of Cagan inflationary finance models. The paradox might be attributable to the popular semi-log schedule for money demand, and the log–log schedule might be an appropriate form for the analysis of hyperinflation.

By Ounce or By Calorie: The Differential Effects of Alternative Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax Strategies.

The obesity epidemic and excessive consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages have led to proposals of economics-based interventions to promote healthy eating in the United States. Targeted food and beverage taxes and subsidies are prominent examples of such potential intervention strategies. This paper examines the differential effects of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages by calories and by ounces on beverage demand. To properly measure the extent of substitution and complementarity between beverage products, we developed a fully modified distance metric model of differentiated product demand that endogenizes the cross-price effects. We illustrated the proposed methodology in a linear approximate almost ideal demand system, although other flexible demand systems can also be used. In the empirical application using supermarket scanner data, the product-level demand model consists of 178 beverage products with combined market share of over 90%. The novel demand model outperformed the conventional distance metric model in non-nested model comparison tests and in terms of the economic significance of model predictions. In the fully modified model, a calorie-based beverage tax was estimated to cost $1.40 less in compensating variation than an ounce-based tax per 3,500 beverage calories reduced. This difference in welfare cost estimates between two tax strategies is more than three times as much as the difference estimated by the conventional distance metric model. If applied to products purchased from all sources, a 0.04-cent per kcal tax on sugar-sweetened beverages is predicted to reduce annual per capita beverage intake by 5,800 kcal.

Business cycle uncertainty and economic welfare

We study the welfare implications of uncertainty in business cycle models. In the modern business cycle literature, multiplicative real shocks to production and/or preferences play an important role as the impulses that produce aggregate fluctuations. Introducing shocks in this way has the implication that fluctuating economies may enjoy higher welfare than their steady state counterparts. This occurs because purposeful agents make use of uncertainty in their favor. The result holds for a range of reasonable parameter values and in various models considered in the business cycle literature. One notable implication is that the welfare cost estimates which have been obtained in the literature using only consumption series may be biased and possibly seriously.

Sectoral Money Demand Behaviour and the Welfare Cost of Inflation in the UK

In this paper, we estimate separate UK money demand functions for the household and corporate sectors; and calculate estimates of the welfare cost of inflation. We find that the household sector bears most of the welfare burden which is in sharp contrast to previous (US) evidence. Also, we find aggregate welfare cost estimates that are much smaller than previous (largely US) estimates—sufficiently smaller as to challenge the oft-quoted Lucas finding that shoe leather costs are by no means trivial. For the UK, we find welfare costs no greater than one tenth of a per cent of real income.

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.

Policies to Encourage Home Energy Efficiency Improvements: Comparing Loans, Subsidies, and Standards

Residential buildings are responsible for approximately 20 percent of U.S. energy consumption, and single-family homes alone account for about 16 percent. Older homes are less energy efficient than newer ones, and although many experts have identified upgrades and improvements that can yield significant energy savings at relatively low, or even negative, cost, it has proved difficult to spur most homeowners to make these investments. In this study, I analyze the energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) impacts from three policies aimed at improving home energy efficiency: a subsidy for the purchase of efficient space heating, cooling, and water heating equipment; a loan for the same purchases; and efficiency standards for such equipment. I use a version of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System, NEMS-RFF, to compute the energy and CO2 effects and standard formulas in economics to calculate the welfare costs of the policies. I find that the loan is quite cost-effective but provides only a very small reduction in emissions and energy use. The subsidy and the standard are both more costly but generate emissions reductions seven times larger than the loan. The subsidy promotes consumer adoption of very high-efficiency equipment, whereas the standard leads to purchases of equipment that just reach the standard. The discount rate used to discount energy savings from the policies has a large effect on the welfare cost estimates.

Measuring the welfare cost of inflation in south africa: a reconsideration

In this paper, using the Fisher and Seater (1993) long-horizon approach, the writers estimate the long-run equilibrium relationship between money balance as a ratio of income and the Treasury bill rate for South Africa over the period 1965:02 to 2007:01, and, in turn, use the obtained estimates of the interest elasticity and the semi-elasticity to derive the welfare cost estimates of inflation, using both Bailey’s (1956) consumer surplus approach and Lucas’ (2000) compensating variation approach. When the results are compared to welfare cost estimates obtained recently by Gupta and Uwilingiye (2008), using the same data set, but basing it on Johansen’s (1991, 1995) cointegration technique, the values are less than half of those obtained in the latter study. These range from 0.16 percent to 0.36 percent of GDP for the target-band of three percent to six percent of inflation. The paper thus highlights the fact that welfare cost estimates of inflation are sensitive to the methodology used to estimate the long-run equilibrium money demand relationships.

Evaluating The Welfare Cost Of Inflation In A Monetary Endogenous Growth General Equilibrium Model: The Case Of South Africa

This paper uses the general equilibrium monetary endogenous growth model of Dotsey and Ireland (1996), in which inflation distorts a variety of marginal decisions, to evaluate the welfare cost of inflation in South Africa – a country, where, since the February of 2000, the sole objective of the central bank has been to keep the inflation rate within the target band of 3 percent to 6 percent. Although individually none of the distortions is very large, they combine to yield substantial welfare cost estimates ranging between 0.70 percent of GDP to 1.33 percent of GDP for the lower and upper limits of the target band. More importantly, the welfare costs obtained here are at least three times more than those derived previously for the South African economy based on partial equilibrium approaches. These higher estimates, thus, tend to make a case for a possibly lower and narrower target band.

Inflation and Welfare in Latin America

This paper follows Bailey (J Polit Econ 64:93–110, 1956) and Lucas (Econometrica 68:247–274, 2000) and estimates the welfare cost of inflation for 17 Latin American economies. We use annual data, from 1955 to 2000, and recent advances in the field of applied econometrics to estimate the inflation rate elasticity of money demand and report significantly high and differential welfare cost estimates for these economies.

MEASURING THE WELFARE COST OF INFLATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

AbstractIn this paper, we estimate the long‐run equilibrium relationship between money balance as a ratio of income and the Treasury bill rate for the period of 1965:02 to 2007:01, and in turn use the relationship to obtain welfare cost estimates of inflation. Using the Johansen technique, we estimate a log‐log specification and a semi‐log model of the above relationship. Based on the fits of the specifications, we decided to rely more on the welfare cost measure obtained under the log‐log money demand model. Our estimates suggest that the welfare cost of inflation for South Africa ranges between 0.34% and 0.67% of GDP, for a band of 3‐6% of inflation. Thus, it seems that the South African Reserve Bank's current inflation target band of 3‐6% is not too poorly designed in terms of welfare.

Climate Change, Mortality and Adaptation: Evidence from Annual Fluctuations in Weather in the U.S.

This paper produces the first large-scale estimates of the US health related welfare costs due to climate change. The full welfare impact will be reflected in health outcomes and increased consumption of goods that preserve individuals' health. Using the presumably random year-to-year variation in temperature and two state of the art climate models, the analysis suggests that under a 'business as usual' scenario climate change will lead to an increase in the overall US annual mortality rate of approximately 2% at the end of the 21st century. Among different age groups, the estimated mortality increases are largest for infants. Individuals are likely to respond to higher temperatures by increasing air conditioning usage; the analysis suggests that climate change will lead to increases in annual residential energy consumption of up to 32% by the end of the century. Overall, the estimates suggest that the present discounted value of willingness to pay to avoid the climate change induced mortality and energy impacts predicted to occur over the remainder of the 21st century is about $900 billion (2006$) or 6.8% of 2006 GDP. This estimate of willingness to pay is statistically insignificant and is likely to overstate the long-run costs of climate change on these outcomes, because climate change will unfold gradually and individuals can engage in a wider set of adaptations that will mitigate costs in the longer run.

The welfare cost of inflation in Italy

This paper follows Lucas (2000), and Serletis and Yavari (2004) and estimates the welfare cost of inflation in Italy. It uses recent advances in the field of applied econometrics to estimate the interest elasticity of money demand in Italy and reports welfare cost estimates close to those reported by Serletis and Yavari for Canada and the USA, but an order of magnitude smaller than those reported by Bullard and Russell (2004) for the US economy.

WELFARE COST OF INFLATION IN A GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM MODEL WITH CURRENCY AND INTEREST-BEARING DEPOSITS

The user cost of non-interest bearing currency is the nominal interest rate. Increases in inflation lead to decreased real currency held in steady state, which imposes a welfare cost. Lucas (2000) estimates this welfare cost in a model with a single non-interest bearing monetary asset. Lucas suggests applying monetary aggregation/index number theory to generalize the model to contain interest-bearing deposits. We solve a general equilibrium model with three agents: a household, a goods producing firm, and a financial firm. We assume that currency and deposits provide utility to the household and form a weakly separable group in the utility function. We use monetary aggregation and index number methods to calibrate the model and estimate the welfare cost of inflation. We compare these estimates to welfare cost estimates from a model in which all money is non-interest bearing currency. We find that the welfare cost of inflation is substantially lower in the models with interest-bearing deposits than in models with only non-interest bearing currency. We also find that the welfare cost of inflation is positively related to the own price elasticity of aggregate money demand.

U.S. money demand and the welfare cost of inflation in a currency–deposit model

This paper emphasizes that it is crucial to identify the proper specification of money demand as well as the appropriate monetary aggregate to find the exact welfare cost of inflation. The econometric test results obtained from the nonlinear form of money demand with Box–Cox restriction indicate that not the semi-logarithmic form but the double-log form with constant elasticity of less than one is a more accurate characterization of the actual data. The welfare cost estimates for the U.S. economy from Bailey’s (1956) consumer’s surplus and Lucas’s (1994) compensating variation approaches imply that for each monetary model (currency–deposit, single-asset) and each scale variable (income, consumption) the double-log function, compared to the constant semi-elasticity Cagan-type demand for money, yields substantial welfare gains in moving from zero inflation to the Friedman optimal deflation rate needed to bring nominal interest rates to zero. This paper also shows that the estimated welfare cost of inflation is proportional to the money stock and because M1 is about three times the monetary base in the United States, identifying M1 without modeling the distinctive roles of currency and deposits as the relevant definition of money overestimates the true welfare cost of inflation.

The Welfare Cost of Inflation in General Equilibrium

This paper presents a general equilibrium monetary model in which inflation distorts a variety of marginal decisions. Although individually none of the distortions is very large, they combine to yield substantial welfare cost estimates. A sustained 4% inflation like that experienced in the U.S. since 1983 costs the economy the equivalent of 0.41% of output per year when currency is identified as the relevant definition of money and over 1% of output per year when M1 is defined as money. The results illustrate how the traditional, partial equilibrium approach can seriously underestimate the true cost of inflation.

The Marginal Cost of Raising Tax Revenue and Redistributing Income

We present analytic formulas for calculating marginal welfare costs when taxes are levied against the wages of a heterogeneous population of households and marginal tax revenue finances either the supply of a public good or lump‐sum transfers. The formulas are applied to explain the wide discrepancy between estimates of marginal welfare costs for redistribution previously obtained through computer simulation procedures. Our calculations reveal that these procedures introduced lump‐sum transfers that were not specified as part of the reforms to be simulated, but explain most of the differences between their estimates. We also show that welfare cost estimates are quite sensitive to the elasticity of labor supply with respect to exhaustive public spending.

The dynamic efficiency cost of not taxing housing

Traditional welfare cost estimates of tax subsidies for owner-occupied housing are less than 0.5% of GNP in the United States and Canada. This paper argues that these static measures understate the true cost of the tax subsidy. Increasing the capital income tax makes untaxed housing more valuable, delivering a windfall bonus to existing homeowners at the expense of future generations. This intergenerational transfer has real efficiency effects in the presence of pre-existing tax distortions. When housing is in fixed supply, the dynamic efficiency cost of preferential tax treatment for housing is as much as 2.2% of GNP, or $120 billion dollars in 1990.

The welfare cost of inflation in general equilibrium

This paper presents a general equilibrium monetary model in which inflation distorts a variety of marginal decisions. Although individually none of the distortions is very large, they combine to yield substantial welfare cost estimates. A sustained 4 percent inflation like that experienced in the US since 1983 costs the economy the equivalent of 0.41 percent of output per year when currency is identified as the relevant definition of money and over 1 percent of output per year when M1 is defined as money. The results illustrate how the traditional, partial equilibrium approach can seriously underestimate the true cost of inflation.