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Visibility Bias in the Transmission of Consumption Beliefs and Undersaving
Han, Bing - 2019
We model visibility bias in the social transmission of consumption behavior. When consumption is more salient than non-consumption, people perceive that others are consuming heavily, and infer that future prospects are favorable. This increases aggregate consumption in a positive feedback loop....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012479520
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Any Non-Individualistic Social Welfare Function Violates the Pareto Principle
Kaplow, Louis - 1999
The public at large, many policymakers, and some economists hold views of social welfare that attach some importance to factors other than individuals' utilities. This note shows that any such non-individualistic notion of social welfare conflicts with the Pareto principle
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012471750
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Concavity of Utility, Concavity of Welfare, and Redistribution of Income
Kaplow, Louis - 2003
' utility functions and the concavity of the social welfare function. In the pertinent literatures, notably on optimal income …, however, reveals that this is not the case. Concavity of utility has a simple, direct effect on the marginal social value of … cases may not be very significant. The implications of this difference are examined for some standard forms of utility and …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012468707
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Efficient Welfare Weights
Hendren, Nathaniel - 2014
How should we measure economic efficiency? The canonical measure is an unweighted sum of willingnesses to pay. In … contrast, this paper provides efficient welfare weights that implement the Kaldor-Hicks tests for efficiency but account for ….5-2x more than surplus to the rich. I illustrate how to use these weights to evaluate the efficiency of government policy …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012458316
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A New Measure of Horizontal Equity
Auerbach, Alan J. - 1999
In this paper, we propose a new measure of horizontal equity that overcomes many of the shortcomings of previous proposed measures. Our starting point is the observation that a well-behaved social welfare function need not evaluate global' (vertical equity) differences in after-tax income using...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012471765
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Population, Productivity, and Sustainable Consumption
Pindyck, Robert S. - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2022
How does the sustainable level of consumption depend on productivity growth and the size and growth rate of the population? What is the effect of uncertainty over these growth rates? I address these questions using a model in which productivity and population growth are stochastic, and social...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013210047
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Fractional Treatment Rules for Social Diversification of Indivisible Private Risks
Manski, Charles F. - 2005
Should a social planner treat observationally identical persons identically? This paper shows that uniform treatment is not necessarily desirable when a planner has only partial knowledge of treatment response. Then there may be reason to implement a fractional treatment rule, with positive...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012467001
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The Optimal Degree of Discretion in Monetary Policy
Athey, Susan - 2003
How much discretion should the monetary authority have in setting its policy? This question is analyzed in an economy with an agreed-upon social welfare function that depends on the randomly fluctuating state of the economy. The monetary authority has private information about that state. In the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012468585
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A Soul's View of the Optimal Population Problem
De la Croix, David; Doepke, Matthias - National Bureau of Economic Research - 2021
, reincarnation serves as a metaphor to facilitate the necessary utility comparisons …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012496107
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Averting Catastrophes that Kill
Martin, Ian - 2017
We face a variety of potential catastrophes; nuclear or bioterrorism, a climate catastrophe, and a "mega-virus" are examples. Martin and Pindyck (AER 2015) showed that decisions to avert such catastrophes are interdependent, so that simple cost-benefit analysis breaks down. They assumed that...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012455335