deep habits price rigidities and the consumption response to government spending this paper inspects the deep habits mechanism originally used by ravn schmitt grohe and uribe 2006 to generate the positive comovement of public and private consumption observed in many var studies in their set up the price elasticity of demand is pro cyclical and it is optimal for the firm to lower the mark up while expanding production after the fiscal shock raising the demand for labor and the real wage consequently agents substitute consumption for leisure and overcome the negative wealth effect of the fiscal expansion here we show that increasing price stickiness reduces the impact of the fiscal shock on the real wage and hinders the rise of consumption if the degree of price stickiness is high enough consumption is crowded out this is in contrast to the role of price rigidities in the standard new keynesian model where they weaken the crowding out of consumption

what makes workers happy this article answers the question what makes workers happy it does so by combining insights from micro economics sociology and psychology basis is the standard utility function of a worker that includes income and hours of work and is elaborated with job characteristics in this way it is possible to answer whether part time workers are happier than full time workers the utility function is estimated on basis of the european social survey 2004 which contains all necessary information the results show that workers optimize income and hours of work as predicted by micro economics but also that part time workers are happier than full time workers challenging work with a high level of autonomy makes the workers happy work pressure makes workers unhappy higher educated workers are unhappier than lower educated workers we find a negative effect of education but this is compensated by the type of jobs these higher educated hold

tricks with hicks the easi demand system we invent implicit marshallian demands which combine desirable features of hicksian and marshallian demands we propose and estimate the exact affine stone index easi implicit marshallian demand system like the almost ideal demand aid system easi budget shares are linear in parameters given real expenditures however unlike the aid easi demands can have any rank and its engel curves can have any shape over real expenditures easi error terms equal random utility parameters to account for unobserved preference heterogeneity easi demand functions can be estimated using gmm or three stage least squares and like aid an approximate easi model can be estimated by linear regression

withering government spending multipliers the empirical literature has documented a weakening of the consumption and output responses to an increase in government spending during the last thirty years we show that a new keynesian model in which real government spending is observed with measurement errors can account for the reduction in the size of government spending multipliers the model implies consistent with empirical evidence presented by ilzeki et al 2009 that the evolution of monetary policy and greater globalization increasing international trade and decreasing capital controls are key factors in this development

income working hours and happiness abstract in empirical analyses the effect of income on happiness tends to be underestimated by ignoring the fact that income has to be earned using the german socio economic panel our analysis confirms this tendency for men the underestimation amounts to 25

semiparametric estimation of consumer demand systems in real expenditure microdata concerning consumer demand typically show considerable variation in real expenditures but very little variation in prices we propose a semiparametric strategy for the consumer demand problem in which expenditure share equations are estimated nonparametrically in the real expenditure direction and estimated parametrically with fixed or varying coefficients in price directions in our model engel curves are unrestricted demands may have any rank because the demand model is derived from a cost function it may be restricted to satisfy integrability and used for consumer surplus calculations since real expenditure is unobserved but rather estimated under the model we face a semiparametric model with a nonparametrically generated regressor we show efficient convergence rates for parametric and nonparametric components we illustrate the feasibility of our proposed strategy using canadian expenditure and price data engel curves display curvature which cannot be encompassed by standard parametric models we also find that the rationality restriction of slutsky symmetry is rejected in the fixed coefficients model but not in the varying coefficients model copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

nonparametric welfare analysis for discrete choice we consider empirical measurement of equivalent variation ev and compensating variation cv resulting from price change of a discrete good using individual level data when there is unobserved heterogeneity in preferences we show that for binary and unordered multinomial choice the marginal distributions of ev and cv can be expressed as simple closed form functionals of conditional choice probabilities under essentially unrestricted preference distributions these results hold even when the distribution and dimension of unobserved heterogeneity are neither known nor identified and utilities are neither quasilinear nor parametrically specified the welfare distributions take simple forms that are easy to compute in applications in particular average ev for a price rise equals the change in average marshallian consumer surplus and is smaller than average cv for a normal good these nonparametric point identification results fail for ordered choice if the unit price is identical for all alternatives thereby providing a connection to hausman newey s 2014 partial identification results for the limiting case of continuous choice

country characteristics and the effects of government consumption shocks on the current account and real exchange rate abstract this paper examines the effects of government consumption shocks on the current account and the real exchange rate as well as the influence of various country characteristics on these effects a dataset of 18 industrial countries is used for the analysis panel var models are estimated for the groups of countries classified by country characteristics the primary empirical findings are as follows first positive government consumption shocks lead if anything to real exchange rate depreciation but the direction of the current account response varies across samples in particular positive government consumption shocks lead to real exchange rate depreciation under a floating exchange rate regime second international capital mobility has a significant impact on the effects of government consumption shocks the depreciation of the real exchange rate and the improvement of current account are larger in countries with low international capital mobility than those with high capital mobility third albeit less robust the depreciation of the real exchange rate and the improvement of the current account are larger in countries under more flexible exchange rate regimes than those under less flexible exchange rate regimes in addition the current account improves more in countries with high trade openness than those with low trade openness standard theories do not fully explain these empirical patterns thus these findings suggest a need for further theoretical development

consumption government spending and the real exchange rate using panel structural var analysis and quarterly data from four industrialized countries we document that an increase in government purchases raises output and private consumption deteriorates the trade balance and depreciates the real exchange rate this pattern of comovement poses a puzzle for both neoclassical and keynesian models an explanation based on the deep habit mechanism is proposed an estimated two country model with deep habits is shown to replicate well the observed responses of output consumption and the trade balance and the initial response of the real exchange rate to an estimated government spending shock

estimating consumption economies of scale adult equivalence scales and household bargaining power how much income would a woman living alone require to attain the same standard of living that she would have if she were married what percentage of a married couple s expenditures are controlled by the husband how much money does a couple save on consumption goods by living together versus living apart we propose and estimate a collective model of household behaviour that permits identification and estimation of concepts such as these we model households in terms of the utility functions of its members a bargaining or social welfare function and a consumption technology function we demonstrate generic non parametric identification of the model and hence of a version of adult equivalence scales that we call indifference scales as well as consumption economies of scale the household s resource sharing rule or members bargaining power and other related concepts copyright 2013 oxford university press

individual heterogeneity and average welfare individual heterogeneity is an important source of variation in demand allowing for general heterogeneity is needed for correct welfare comparisons we consider general heterogenous demand where preferences and linear budget sets are statistically independent we find that the dimension of heterogeneity and the individual demand functions are not identified we also find that the exact consumer surplus of a price change averaged across individuals is not identified motivating bounds analysis we use bounds on income effects to derive relatively simple bounds on the average surplus including for discrete continous choice we also sketch an approach to bounding surplus that does not use income effect bounds we apply the results with income effect bounds to gasoline demand we find little sensitivity to the income effect bounds in this application

international fiscal spillovers a two country business cycle model featuring nominal rigidities countercyclical mark ups rule of thumb consumers and government spending reversals is used to identify inequality predictions that are robust across a range of empirically plausible parameterizations these robust inequality restrictions are imposed onto a regime change factor model for the united states and its main trade partners to estimate the international fiscal spillovers the effects of u s government spending on foreign real activity are found to be sizable and significant operating mainly by lowering real interest rates rather than boosting trade balances in contrast there seems to be only limited evidence of state dependence in the international transmission of fiscal policy

identifying combinatorial valuations from aggregate demand abstract we study identification of combinatorial valuations from aggregate demand each utility function takes as arguments subsets or alternatively quantities of the multiple goods we exploit mathematical insights from auction theory to generically identify the distribution of utility functions in our setting aggregate demand for each item is observable while demand for bundles is not nevertheless our identification result allows us to recover the latter

tax and spending shocks in the open economy are the deficits twins abstract we present evidence on the open economy consequences of us fiscal policy shocks identified through proxy instrumental variables tax shocks and government spending shocks that raise the government budget deficit lead to persistent current account deficits in particular the negative response of the current account to exogenous tax reductions through a surge in the demand for imports is among the strongest and most precisely estimated effects moreover we find that the reduction of the current account is amplified when the tax reduction is due to lower personal income taxes and when the government increases its consumption expenditures historically a much larger share of current account dynamics has been due to tax shocks than to government spending shocks

demand systems with and without errors revealed preference theory assumes that each consumer has demands that are rational meaning that they arise from the maximization of his or her own utility function in contrast econometric or statistical demand models assume that each consumer s demands equal a rational systematic component derived from a common utility function plus an individual specific additive error term this paper reconciles these differences by providing necessary and sufficient conditions for rationality of statistical demand models given individual consumer rationality

exact consumer s surplus and deadweight loss consumer s surplus is a widely used tool in applied welfare economics both economic theorists and cost benefit analysis often use consumer s surplus despite its somewhat dubious reputation the basic idea is to evaluate the value to a consumer or his willingness to pay for a change in price of a good from say pricep to pricep because price changes affect consumer welfare an evaluation of this effect is often a key input to public policy decisions yet consumer s surplus is probably the most controversial of widely used economic concepts both paul samuelson and ian little conclude that the economics profession would be better off without it it is my feeling of the situation that substantial agreement exists on the correct quantities to be measured the amount the consumer would pay or would need to be paid to be just as well off after the price change as he was before the price change the quantities correspond to john hicks compensating variation measures an alternative measure which takes ex post price change utility as the basis of comparison is hicks equivalent variation the controversy arises in the measurement of these quantities the usual measurement procedure is to use the area to the left of the marshallian market demand curve between two price levels jules dupuit originated this measure of welfare change and alfred marshall and hicks derived appropriate conditions for its use the primary condition for the area to the left of the demand curve to correspond to the compensating variation is to have constant marginal utility of income marshall gave this condition and if it holds the same quantity will be derived as the area to the left of the compensated hicksian demand curve this area to the left of the compensated demand curve is exactly what the compensating variation and equivalent variation measure thus the constant marginal utility of income is a sufficient condition for marshallian consumer s surplus to be equal to hicks consumer s surplus in this case arnold harberger s plea to use the welfare triangle as one half times the product of the price change times the quantity change to measure deadweight loss corresponds to the correct theoretical amount of welfare change in a recent paper robert willig derives bounds for the percentage difference between the correct measure of either the compensating or equivalent variation and the marshallian measure derived form the market demand curve his bounds which depend on the income elasticity of demand for the single good in the region of price change being considered as well as the proportion of the consumer s income spent on the good demonstrate that the marshallian consumer s surplus is often a good approximation to hicks consumer s surplus the fact that the proportion of the consumer s income spent matters as well as the income elasticity was first pointed out by harold hotelling willig contends that the approximation error will be less than the errors involved in estimating the demand curve thus he hopes to remove the need for apology that applied economists often need to give to theorists who remark on the inappropriateness of using marshallian consumer s surplus to measure welfare change however in this paper i show that for the case primarily considered by willig of a single price change which is also the situation in which consumer s surplus is often used in applied work no approximation is necessary professor of economics massachusetts institute of technology and research associate national bureau of economic research i would like to thank peter diamond erwin diewert daniel mcfadden robert merton robert solow hal varian joel yellin and the referees for help and comments research support from the national science foundation is acknowledged the reason that we still have two rather than one of samuelson s six measures of consumer s surplus arises from an index number problem of the correct basis for the welfare comparison i will give both measures but plan to concentrate on the compensating variation

time to build consumption complementarity and fiscal stimulus abstract we show that time to build which creates a time gap between government spending and the accumulation of public goods is an important element that weakens the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus in the environment where private consumption and public goods are edgeworth complements adding time to build to the model delays the timing of utility enhancing effects of an increase in government expenditure leading households to shift consumption from today to the future the expansionary effect of government spending is hence dampened which contrasts existing studies with edgeworth complementarity between private and public consumption

income happiness and the disutility of labor abstract we re examine the claim that the income effect on happiness is downward biased because higher income demands more work effort we find no evidence of an underestimation because the impact of working hours on happiness is rather small and hill shaped

unobserved preference heterogeneity in demand using generalized random coefficients we model unobserved preference heterogeneity in demand systems via random barten scales in utility functions these barten scales appear as random coefficients multiplying prices in demand functions consumer demands are nonlinear in prices and may have unknown functional structure we therefore prove identification of generalized random coefficients models defined as nonparametric regressions where each regressor is multiplied by an unobserved random coefficient having an unknown distribution using canadian data we estimate energy demand functions with and without random coefficient barten scales we find that not accounting for this unobserved preference heterogeneity substantially biases estimated consumer surplus costs of an energy tax jel codes c14 d12 d13 c21 keywords unobserved heterogeneity nonseparable errors random utility parameters random coefficients equivalence scales consumer surplus welfare calculations the authors wish to thank jinyong hahn richard blundell stefan hoderlein rosa matzkin and anonymous referees for helpful discussions and suggestions earlier versions of this paper were circulated under the

static and intertemporal household decisions we discuss the most popular static and dynamic models of household behavior our main objective is to explain which aspects of household decisions different models can account for using this insight we describe testable implications identification results and estimation findings obtained in the literature particular attention is given to the ability of different models to answer various types of policy questions

a note on different approaches to index number theory the central question in a recent paper by j peter neary 2004 concerning real incomes and the penn world tables is what exactly do the numbers mean this question is important because these data are widely used in empirical research more generally index number data including indicators of inflation and economic growth are used so extensively in research throughout the profession that it indeed seems helpful to understand what they actually indicate in the literature two approaches to index numbers are distinguished the axiomatic approach and the economic approach in this note we would like to discuss the way in which these two approaches differ and how that affects what the numbers mean in neary s paper the difference is described as one between an approach that does and an approach that does not assume that quantities arise from optimizing behavior this is in line with a tradition in index number theory that can be traced back to ragnar frisch 1936 we will argue that a more accurate description is that the difference lies in whether or not optimizing agents or representative consumers are assumed to optimize the same utility function it is exactly this distinction that sets the differ ent limitations of both approaches for constructing a meaningful indicator of real income those limitations will be described in some detail and being aware of them is helpful for assessing the value of results from both the axiomatic and the economic approach they also suggest ways in which the two approaches may be complementary for constructing meaningful index numbers introducing the geary allen international accounts gaia system neary combines taking the economic approach with judging the resulting indices in view of some axioms we think that this makes his paper a suitable point of departure for the discussion of how the two approaches handle differences in relative prices on the one hand and differences in preferences on the other

aggregation without separability a generalized composite commodity theorem this paper provides general conditions for aggregating commodities without separable utility these conditions impose weaker and more empirically plausible restrictions on price movements than the currently existing alternative to separability the hicks leontief composite commodity theorem the idea is to allow departures from hicks leontief that take the form of well behaved error terms utility functions that permit generalized composite commodity aggregation include the aids model the translog all homothetic utility functions and any utility function when demands are aggregated to two groups of goods implications of empirical nonstationarity of relative prices for aggregation and demand estimation are considered copyright 1996 by american economic association

how revealing is revealed preference this lecture address the following two key criticisms of the empirical application of revealed preference theory when the rp conditions do not reject they do not provide precise predictions and when they do reject they do not help characterize the nature of irrationality or the degree direction of changing tastes recent developments in the application of rp theory are shown to have rendered these criticisms unfounded a powerful test of rationality is available that also provides a natural characterization of changing tastes tight bounds on demand responses and on the welfare costs of relative price and tax changes are also available and are shown to work well in practice

heterogeneity and the non parametric analysis of consumer choice conditions for invertibility this paper considers structural non parametric random utility models for continuous choice variables with unobserved heterogeneity we provide sufficient conditions on random preferences to yield reduced form systems of non parametric stochastic demand functions that allow global invertibility between demands and non separable unobserved heterogeneity invertibility is essential for global identification of structural consumer demand models for the existence of well specified probability models of choice and for the non parametric analysis of revealed stochastic preference we distinguish between new classes of models in which heterogeneity is separable and non separable in the marginal rates of substitution respectively

nonparametric estimation of a nonseparable demand function under the slutsky inequality restriction we present a method for consistent nonparametric estimation of a demand function with nonseparable unobserved taste heterogeneity subject to the shape restriction implied by the slutsky inequality we use the method to estimate gasoline demand in the united states the results reveal differences in behavior between heavy and moderate gasoline users they also reveal variation in the responsiveness of demand to plausible changes in prices across the income distribution we extend our estimation method to permit endogeneity of prices the empirical results illustrate the improvements in finite sample performance of a nonparametric estimator from imposing shape restrictions based on economic theory

the common scaling social cost of living index if preferences or budgets are heterogeneous across people as they clearly are then individual cost of living indexes are also heterogeneous thus any social cost of living index faces an aggregation problem in this article we provide a solution to this problem that we call a common scaling social cost of living index cs scoli in addition we describe nonparametric methods for estimating such social cost of living indexes as an application we consider changes in the social cost of living in the u s between 1988 and 2000

fiscal policy in an unemployment crisis this paper shows that large scal multipliers arise naturally from equilibrium unemployment dynamics in response to a shock that brings the economy into a liquidity trap an expansion in government spending increases output and causes a fall in the unemployment rate since movements in unemployment are persistent the eects of current spending linger into the future leading to an enduring rise in income as an enduring rise in income boosts private demand even a temporary increase in government spending sets in motion a virtuous employment spending spiral with a large associated multiplier this transmission mechanism contrasts with the conventional view in which scal policy may be ecacious only under a prolonged and committed rise in government spending which engineers a spiral of increasing ination

fiscal stimulus with learning by doing using a bayesian svar analysis we document that an increase in government purchases raises private consumption the real wage and total factor productivity tfp while reducing inflation each of these facts is hard to reconcile with both neoclassical and new keynesian models we extend a standard new keynesian model to allow for skill accumulation through past work experience following chang gomes and schorfheide 2002 an increase in government spending increases hours and induces skill accumulation and higher measured tfp and real wages in subsequent periods future marginal costs fall lowering future expected inflation and through the monetary policy rule the real interest rate consumption increases as a result

nonparametric engel curves and revealed preference this paper applies revealed preference theory to the nonparametric statistical analysis of consumer demand knowledge of expansion paths is shown to improve the power of nonparametric tests of revealed preference the tightest bounds on indifference surfaces and welfare measures are derived using an algorithm for which revealed preference conditions are shown to guarantee convergence nonparametric engel curves are used to estimate expansion paths and provide a stochastic structure within which to examine the consistency of household level data and revealed preference theory an application is made to a long time series of repeated cross sections from the family expenditure survey for britain the consistency of these data with revealed preference theory is examined for periods of consistency with revealed preference tight bounds are placed on true cost of living indices

two fiscal policy puzzles revisited new evidence and an explanation abstract this paper examines two fiscal policy puzzles related to the effects of government spending shocks contrary to theoretical predictions recent empirical evidence suggests a crowding in of consumption and a depreciation of the real exchange rate after a government spending increase while several studies have been made to reconcile the conflicting results this paper provides new time series evidence and proposes an alternative explanation using the japanese data the empirical responses of consumption and the real exchange rate after government spending shocks are shown to be well replicated by an estimated medium scale open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model augmented with i edgeworth complementarity between private and government consumption and ii productive public capital furthermore sensitivity analysis suggests that the combination of edgeworth complementarity home bias and incomplete asset market allows the model to account for an immediate increase in consumption and for a hump shaped depreciation of the real exchange rate after a government consumption shock this result is potentially important in preventing the model from showing the consumption real exchange rate anomaly after the shock

heterogeneity in consumer demands and the income effect evidence from panel data this paper uses unique spanish panel data on household expenditures to test whether unobservable heterogeneity in household demands taste etc is correlated with total expenditures income the main finding is that tastes are indeed correlated with income for about half of the goods considered implying that cross sectional estimates of income elasticities for these goods are biased the goods are the following food eaten outside home alcohol and tobacco transportation and energy the elasticity of alcohol and tobacco is more than halved when taking unobserved heterogeneity into account for transportation the bias is sufficiently large to misclassify the good as a luxury

on fiscal multipliers estimates from a medium scale dsge model this paper contributes to the debate on fiscal multipliers in the context of a structural model i estimate a micro founded dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that features a rich fiscal policy block and a transmission mechanism for government spending shocks using bayesian techniques for us data

housework and fiscal expansions in an otherwise standard business cycle model with housework calibrated consistently with data on time use we discipline complementarity between consumption and hours worked and relate its strength to the size of fiscal multipliers evidence on the substitutability between home and market goods confirms that complementarity is an empirically relevant driver of fiscal multipliers however in a housework model substantial complementarity can be generated without imposing a low wealth effect which contradicts the microeconomic evidence also explicitly modeling housework matters for assessing the welfare effects of government spending which are understated by theories that neglect substitutability between home produced and market goods

deep habits and exchange rate pass through abstract habit persistence at the level of individual goods varieties can explain incomplete exchange rate pass through to international prices deep habits give rise to a dynamic import demand function that leads to import price markup adjustments independently of nominal pricing frictions augmenting a two country dsge model with deep habits we obtain low exchange rate pass through to import prices even when nominal local currency price rigidities are negligibly low as nominal pricing frictions become more important the presence of deep habits further impedes the pass through of exchange rate fluctuations estimating model variants with limited information as well as full information methods we find that the deep habits model requires much lower degrees of nominal price rigidities to match empirical measures of the pass through of exchange rate fluctuations to us import prices

editorial are consumers rational experimental evidence despite some misconceptions consumer rationality is a property of the researcher rather than the consumer consumers become more rational as we are better able to predict their behavior or other important outcomes influenced by their behavior perfect rationality results when we achieve accurate predictions consequently at least for many marketing science articles consumers are becoming more rational as we find better ways to predict however some experimental consumer behavior articles find the opposite the difference between experimental and statistical controls explains the divergence in conclusions experimental controls test rationality based on whether previously absent variables exhibit significant explanatory power holding known explanatory variables constant statistical controls test rationality based on the incremental explanatory power of previously absent variables after accounting for known explanatory variables moreover experimental tests tend to isolate consumer behavior predictions while statistical tests check for sufficient accuracy to choose among different firm strategies both perspectives are correct but ask very different questions

measuring consumer welfare with mean demands the welfare change from a price increase for example the compensating variation cv is often calculated using the expenditure function from an estimated demand if there is unobserved preference heterogeneity then the estimated demand is an average over households with different preferences and the cv from the mean demand does not generally equal the mean cv we give conditions ensuring that the cv from the mean demand equals the mean cv is less than the mean cv and approximates the mean cv better than the change in consumers surplus a necessary condition is that demands become more dispersed as income rises

estimating the distribution of welfare effects using quantiles this paper proposes a framework to model empirically welfare effects that are associated with a price change in a population of heterogeneous consumers which is similar to hausman and newey 1995 but allows for more general forms of heterogeneity individual demands are characterized by a general model which is nonparametric in the regressors as well as monotonic in unobserved heterogeneity in this setup we first provide and discuss conditions under which the heterogeneous welfare effects are identified and establish constructive identification we then propose a sample counterpart estimator and analyze its large sample properties for both identification and estimation we distinguish between the cases when regressors are exogenous and when they are endogenous finally we apply all concepts to measuring the heterogeneous effect of a chance of gasoline price using us consumer data and find very substantial differences in individual effects across quantiles

monetary and fiscal policy under deep habits allowing habits to be formed at the level of individual goods deep habits can radically alter the fiscal policy transmission mechanism as the counter cyclicality of mark ups this implies can result in government spending crowding in rather than crowding out private consumption in the short run we explore the robustness of this mechanism to the existence of price discrimination in the supply of goods to the public and private sectors we then describe optimal monetary and fiscal policy in our new keynesian economy subject to the additional externality of deep habits and explore the ability of simple policy rules to mimic fully optimal policy we find that the presence of deep habits at empirically estimated levels can imply large externalities that significantly affect the conduct of monetary and tax policy however despite the rise in government spending multipliers implied by deep habits government spending is barely used as a stabilisation tool under the optimal policy

improving revealed preference bounds on demand responses there are three key dimensions by which revealed preference bounds on consumer demand responses can be improved the first relates to the improvements that arise from using expansion paths for given relative prices e bounds the second concerns the addition of new price information thirdly there are improvements due to assuming separability our previous research has examined the first two cases in this article we show how to impose separability assumptions within a fully nonparametric analysis and distinguish between weak and homothetic separability we also apply these ideas to the analysis of demand responses using united kingdom household level data

exchange rate pass through when market share matters the authors investigate the pass through from exchange rates to import prices when firms future demands depend on their current market shares they show that profit maximizing foreign firms may either raise or lower their dollar export prices when the dollar appreciates temporarily i e the pass through may be perverse and that current import prices may be more sensitive to expected future exchange rates than to current exchange rates they present evidence that suggests the behavior of expected future exchange rates may provide a clue to the puzzling recent behavior of u s import prices copyright 1989 by american economic association

redistributive fiscal policies and business cycles in emerging economies abstract government expenditures are pro cyclical in emerging markets and counter cyclical in developed economies we show this pattern is most pronounced in social transfers which are also a large component of total government expenditures 28 39 the discrepancy in the cyclicality of spending on goods and services is smaller by contrast and the category accounts for just 11 16 of total government expenditures in a small open economy model we find disparate social transfer policies can account for about half of the larger cyclical volatility of consumption relative to output in emerging economies compared to developed we analyze how differences in tax policy and the nature of underlying inequality amplify or mitigate this result

an empirical characterization of the dynamic effects of police spending on violent and property crime the study estimates the dynamic effects of shocks to police expenditures on measures of violent and property crime rates using annual u s state level data for the period 1960 2015 we employ a structural panel var model and achieve identification by imposing the restriction that police spending responds to structural shocks to crime with at least a lag of 1 year results indicate that a shock to police spending leads to a persistent and significant decreases in violent and property crime rates and b significant and persistent negative impacts on crime rates in periods of high crime but little impacts in periods of low crime variance decompositions show that shocks to police spending account for moderate to large proportions of the variability of u s state level crime rates our findings are robust across separate measures of violent and property crime rates as well as to the inclusion of additional variables to the baseline panel var model jel k42

estimation of heterogeneous preferences with an application to demand for internet services this paper presents a structural econometric framework for discrete and continuous consumer choices in which unobserved intrapersonal and interpersonal preference heterogeneity is modeled explicitly it outlines a simulation assisted estimation methodology applicable in this framework this methodology is illustrated in an application to analyze data from the u c berkeley internet demand experiment

nonparametric welfare and demand analysis with unobserved individual heterogeneity abstract this paper combines revealed preference and nonparametric estimation techniques to obtain nonparametric bounds on the distribution of the money metric utility and demand functions over a population of heterogeneous households our approach is independent of any functional specification on the household utility functions our method applies the weak axiom of revealed preference to a population of heterogeneous households although this does not produce the sharpest bounds we show that it is computationally attractive and provides narrow bounds we demonstrate the usefulness of our results by applying it to the consumer expenditure survey a us cross sectional consumption data set jel codes d12 c14

additive general error models for production cost and derived demand or share systems many empirical studies of production specify a deterministic model of the firm derive the implied behavioral equations input demand or share system and then embed this system in a stochastic framework by tacking on linear error terms in contrast this paper proposes general error models gems in which the error specification is an integral part of the optimization model these models are the statistical embodiment of stigler s view that apparent observed inefficiencies reflect the investigator s ignorance of the true optimization problem additive gems are proposed and interpreted specification tests indicate that a translog additive gem is superior to the standard translog specification

an assessment of trends in technology use innovative work practices and employees attitudes in europe several studies of innovative work practices show a positive link with firm performance and employees task involvement organizational commitment and citizenship behaviours one of the recent changes faced by firms is the introduction of information and communication technologies icts although several empirical studies analyse the links between ict use innovative work practices and firm performance employee level analyses are scarce using data from the european working condition survey ewcs this article investigates the relationships between use of the internet and computers and positive attitudes among employees social support job satisfaction extra effort in the european context our empirical results are based on data for more than 9500 employees from 16 european countries in 2005 and more than 14 000 in 2010 among the different effects of ict use based on the results for the 2005 2010 and the pooled 2005 2010 sample and in a within cohorts change analysis we find that internet use

the effects of government spending on real exchange rates evidence from military spending panel data abstract using panel data on military spending for 125 countries we document new facts about the effects of changes in government purchases on the real exchange rate consumption and current accounts in both advanced and developing countries while an increase in government purchases causes real exchange rates to appreciate and increases consumption significantly in developing countries it causes real exchange rates to depreciate and decreases consumption in advanced countries the current account decreases in both groups of countries these findings are not consistent with standard international business cycle models we discuss potential sources of the differences between advanced and developing countries in the responses to spending shocks

can public spending boost private consumption this paper analyses the effects on private consumption from an increase in productive and unproductive public spending a new keynesian model incorporating price and wage rigidities monetary policy and various fiscal rules is developed and estimated using bayesian techniques to capture the key cyclical characteristics of the us economy we find that price and wage rigidities along with a positive shock to the part of public spending that is productive are suficient to boost private consumption moreover we show that this initial positive reaction of private consumption is adequate to create a positive present value consumption multiplier for more than five years finally we show that our main results remain robust to changes in the monetary rule and the various methods of deficit financing

twin deficit or twin divergence fiscal policy current account and real exchange rate in the u s abstract in spite of concerns about twin deficits fiscal and the current account deficits for the united states economy empirical evidence suggests that twin divergence is a more usual feature of the historical data i e when fiscal accounts worsen the current account improves and vice versa this paper empirically studies the effects of fiscal policy government budget deficit shocks on the current account and the real exchange rate during the flexible exchange rate regime period based on var vector auto regression models we identified exogenous fiscal policy shocks after controlling for business cycle effects on fiscal balances in contrast to the predictions of most theoretical models the u s results suggest that an expansionary fiscal policy shock or a government budget deficit shock improve the current account and depreciate the real exchange rate increases in private savings and declines in investment contribute to the current account improvement while a nominal exchange rate depreciation as opposed to a relative price level change is mainly responsible for the real exchange rate depreciation the twin divergence of fiscal balances and current account balances is also explained by the prevalence of output shocks i e output shocks more than fiscal shocks appear to drive the co movements of the current account and the fiscal balance

a fiscal stimulus and jobless recovery we analyze the effects of a government spending expansion in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with mortensen pissarides labor market frictions deep habits in private and public consumption investment adjustment costs a constant elasticity of substitution ces production function and adjustments in employment at both intensive and extensive margins the combination of deep habits and ces technology is crucial the presence of deep habits magnifies the responses of macroeconomic variables to a fiscal stimulus while an elasticity of substitution between capital and labor in the range of available estimates allows the model to produce a scenario compatible with the observed jobless recovery

fiscal multipliers in recessions standard business cycle models have difficulties generating large state dependent fiscal multipliers employing a model of costly financial intermediation based on curdia woodford we show that fiscal multipliers can be strongly state dependent fiscal expansions during recessions may lead to multiplier values exceeding two while similar expansions during economic booms would produce values falling short of unity this pattern obtains if the spread the financial friction is more sensitive to fiscal policy during recessions than during expansions a feature that is present in the data our results are consistent with recent empirical work documenting the state contingency of multipliers

liquidity premia and interest rate parity abstract due to the us dollar s dominant role for international trade and finance risk free assets denominated in us currency not only offer a pecuniary return but also provide transaction services both nationally and internationally accordingly the responses of bilateral us dollar exchange rates to interest rate shocks should differ substantially with respect to the us or foreign origin of the shock we demonstrate this empirically and apply a model of liquidity premia on us treasuries originating from monetary policy implementation the liquidity premium leads to a modification of uncovered interest rate parity uip which enables the model to explain an appreciation of the dollar subsequent to an increase in us interest rates if foreign interest rates follow the us monetary policy rate

the age specific burdens of short run fluctuations in government spending abstract we study the impact of government spending shocks on the distribution of income and wealth between cohorts and the associated welfare effects in a dynamic stochastic overlapping generations model with two types of households ricardian households and rule of thumb consumers we demonstrate that an unexpected increase in government spending decreases income and wealth inequality in contrast to the conventional wisdom that the financing of government expenditures by debt rather than taxes especially burdens young generations we find that debt financing also harms ricardian households during retirement the crucial element in our analysis is a wealth effect that results from the decline in the price of capital due to higher government debt

nonparametric estimation of exact consumers surplus and deadweight loss we apply nonparametric regression models to estimation of demand curves of the type most often used in applied research from the demand curve estimators we derive estimates of exact consumers surplus and deadweight loss which are the most widely used welfare and economic efficiency measures in areas of economics such as public finance we also develop tests of the symmetry and downward sloping properties of compensated demand we work out asymptotic normal sampling theory for kernel and series nonparametric estimators as well as for the parametric case the paper includes an application to gasoline demand empirical questions of interest here are the shape of the demand curve and the average magnitude of welfare loss from a tax on gasoline in this application we compare parametric and nonparametric estimates of the demand curve calculate exact and approximate measures of consumers surplus and deadweight loss and give standard error estimates we also analyze the sensitivity of the welfare measures to components of nonparametric regression estimators such as the number of terms in a series approximation

the random utility hypothesis and inference in demand systems in this paper the authors examine the consequences of adopting the random utility hypothesis as an approach for randomizing a system of demand equations random utility models are appealing since they allow the usual assumption of deterministic utility maximizing behavior by each consumer to coexist with the apparent randomness across individuals that is exhibited by data their results show that the use of random utility models implies that the disturbances of the demand equations may not be homoskedastic but must be functions of prices and or income copyright 1989 by the econometric society

government spending entry and the consumption crowding in puzzle this article documents empirically that net firm entry robustly rises after a u s government spending expansion we use this new finding to test the empirical validity of various model features that have been proposed to generate consumption crowding in after positive expenditure shocks endogenous entry models typically fail to generate the observed joint increase in consumption and entry model features that dampen the wealth effect such as rule of thumb households or complementarity between labor and consumption in preferences tend to reduce entry we show that utility or productivity enhancing public spending can reconcile the model with our documented fact and performs well empirically

international real business cycles we ask whether a two country real business cycle model can account simultaneously for domestic and international aspects of business cycles with this question in mind we document a number of discrepancies between theory and data the most striking discrepancy concerns the correlations of consumption and output across countries in the data outputs are generally more highly correlated across countries than consumptions in the model we see the opposite

quadratic engel curves and consumer demand this paper presents a model of consumer demand that is consistent with the observed expenditure patterns of individual consumers in a long time series of expenditure surveys and is also able to provide a detailed welfare analysis of shifts in relative prices a nonparametric analysis of consumer expenditure patterns suggests that engel curves require quadratic terms in the logarithm of expenditure while popular models of demand such as the translog or the almost ideal demand systems do allow flexible price responses within a theoretically coherent structure they have expenditure share engel curves that are linear in the logarithm of total expenditure we derive the complete class of integrable quadratic logarithmic expenditure share systems a specification from this class is estimated on a large pooled data set of u k households models that fail to account for engel curvature are found ro generate important distortions in the patterns of welfare losses associated with a tax increase

twin deficits squaring theory evidence and common sense in this paper we reconsider the twin deficit hypothesis that fiscal shocks generating budget deficits also worsen external trade both from a theoretical point of view and by analyzing data for australia canada the uk and the us first we assess the joint dynamics of budget and trade deficits along the business cycle uncovering a strikingly recurrent s shaped relation between the two the correlation is actually negative suggesting twin divergence this observation however cannot rule out the possibility that government spending expansions and or tax cuts may cause trade deficits as the overall correlation is likely to be dominated by cyclical factors second we reconsider the transmission of government spending in a standard two country two good model we find that openness and the persistence of fiscal shocks are major determinants of the magnitude or even sign of the response of the trade balance to fiscal shocks for a given persistence of the fiscal shock the closer an economy the larger the crowding out effect on investment the lower the deterioration of the trade balance third we take this insight to the data investigating the transmission of fiscal shocks in a var framework in the four countries in our sample our empirical findings tend to support our view in the us and australia which are relatively less open than canada and the uk and where government spending shocks are less persistent we find that the external impact of fiscal policy is rather limited instead private investment responds substantially the reverse is true for canada and the uk these findings confirm and put into perspective earlier results whereas fiscal expansions in the us are found to have on average a negligible effect on the country s trade balance however we emphasize that these results are consistent with a call for a us fiscal retrenchment to address global imbalances the impact of budget cuts on the us external trade is muted by their positive effect on domestic investment strengthening the us ability to generate resources against future interest and debt repayment

fiscal policy and lending relationships this paper studies how fiscal policy affects loan market conditions in the us first it conducts a structural vector autoregression analysis showing that the bank spread responds negatively to an expansionary government spending shock while lending increases second it illustrates that these results are mimicked by a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model where the bank spread is endogenized via the inclusion of a banking sector exploiting lending relationships third it shows that lending relationships represent a friction that generates a financial accelerator effect in the transmission of the fiscal shock