Download or read book The Impact of Economic Policies on Heterogeneous Consumers written by Rongzhang Wang and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic policies can have distributional effects on the market, and often the heterogeneity is tied to the differentiated socio-economic status of consumers. In this dissertation, I study two kinds of policies: rebate programs for clean vehicle buyers, and banking deregulation to stimulate credit supply. The results show that a rationed, income-capped program had large, unexpected spillover effects; while a national policy affected only the lower-valued segment of the housing market. In Chapter 1, we examine the informational spillover effects on clean vehicles sales associated with a highly-rationed rebate program that targeted moderate to lower lower-income Californians. By exploiting differences of the geographic roll-out in this program, we find that it was associated with approximately at least 2,645 additional clean vehicles sales beyond the 712 vehicles that directly received subsidies. We also calculate the direct environmental benefits of both those vehicles receiving direct subsidies and "spillover" vehicles by estimating local reductions in gasoline consumption and increases in electricity generation attributable to the program, and their marginal effect on human health. Although the per vehicle benefits were lower for the induced "spillover" vehicles then for the subsidized vehicles, the aggregate benefits provided by the spillover vehicles was one third larger than those that were directly subsidized. Using a structural model, I further explore how subsidies affect electric vehicle sales and prices, and the welfare consequences of such schemes in Chapter 2. I begin with providing empirical evidence that government incentive programs have helped increase electric vehicle sales. Next, I build and estimate a static market equilibrium model, taking into consideration subsidies, observed and unobserved properties of vehicles, heterogeneous consumer preferences, and marginal cost of production. Finally, I simulate the effects of government incentive programs on electric vehicle sales and prices, and estimate their welfare consequences. The final chapter is dedicated to the effect of credit market on housing prices. Does a financial market expansion provide the same benefits to households of all income levels? In this paper, we answer the question by studying the 1994 Riegle-Neal Act, a national banking deregulation rule. Our results suggest that the deregulation leads to higher levels of credit supply from banks. And in turn, 1% increase in credit supply leads to 0.51-0.52% increase in the capital gains of lower-valued properties. Median and higher-valued properties are not affected significantly by the credit shock. A possible explanation is that the channels of credit expansion, including lowered down payment, are mostly relevant to low-income home buyers, who are also the major players in the lower-valued property market.

Download or read book Heterogeneous Consumers and Fiscal Policy Shocks written by Emily B. Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper studies stylized empirical facts regarding the effects of unexpected changes in aggregate macroeconomic fiscal policies on consumers that are allowed to differ depending on their individual characteristics. We use data from the Consumption Expenditure Survey (CEX) to estimate individual-level impulse responses as well as multipliers for government spending and tax policy shocks. The main empirical finding of this paper is that unexpected fiscal shocks have substantially different effects on consumers depending on their age, income levels, and education. In particular, the wealthiest individuals tend to behave according to the predictions of standard RBC models, whereas the poorest individuals tend to behave according to standard IS-LM (non-Ricardian) models, due to credit constraints. Furthermore, government spending policy shocks tend to decrease consumption inequality, whereas tax policy shocks most negatively affect the lives of the poor, more so than the rich, thus increasing consumption inequality.

Download or read book The Effects of Economic Shocks on Heterogeneous Inflation Expectations written by Yoosoon Chang and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2022-07 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, we examine how economic shocks affect the distribution of household inflation expectations. We show that the dynamics of households' expected inflation distributions are driven by three distinctive functional shocks, which influence the expected inflation distribution through disagreement, level shift and ambiguity. Linking these functional shocks to economic shocks, we find that contractionary monetary shocks increase the average level of inflation expectation with anchoring effects, with a reduction in disagreement and an increase in the share of households expecting future inflation to be between 2 to 4 percent. Such anchoring effects are not observed when the high inflation periods prior to the Volcker disinflation are included. Expansionary government spending shocks have inflationary effects on both short and medium-run inflation expectations, while an increase in personal income tax shocks is inflationary for mediumrun. A surprise increase in gasoline prices increases the level of inflation expectations, but lowers the share of households with 2 percent inflation expectations.

Download or read book Inflation Expectations written by Peter J. N. Sinclair and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-16 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inflation is regarded by the many as a menace that damages business and can only make life worse for households. Keeping it low depends critically on ensuring that firms and workers expect it to be low. So expectations of inflation are a key influence on national economic welfare. This collection pulls together a galaxy of world experts (including Roy Batchelor, Richard Curtin and Staffan Linden) on inflation expectations to debate different aspects of the issues involved. The main focus of the volume is on likely inflation developments. A number of factors have led practitioners and academic observers of monetary policy to place increasing emphasis recently on inflation expectations. One is the spread of inflation targeting, invented in New Zealand over 15 years ago, but now encompassing many important economies including Brazil, Canada, Israel and Great Britain. Even more significantly, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the United States Federal Bank are the leading members of another group of monetary institutions all considering or implementing moves in the same direction. A second is the large reduction in actual inflation that has been observed in most countries over the past decade or so. These considerations underscore the critical – and largely underrecognized - importance of inflation expectations. They emphasize the importance of the issues, and the great need for a volume that offers a clear, systematic treatment of them. This book, under the steely editorship of Peter Sinclair, should prove very important for policy makers and monetary economists alike.

Download or read book Heterogeneous Consumers Segmented Asset Markets and the Real Effects of Monetary Policy written by Zeno Enders and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper proposes a novel mechanism by which changes in the distribution of money holdings have real effects. Specifically, I develop a flexible-price model of segmented asset markets that generates real aggregate effects of monetary policy through the dependence of optimal markups on the heterogeneity of money holdings. Because varieties of consumption bundles are purchased sequentially, newly injected money disseminates slowly throughout the economy via second-round effects. The model predicts a short-term inflation-output trade-off, a liquidity effect, countercyclical markups, and procyclical wages after monetary shocks. Among other correlations of financial variables, it also reproduces the empirical, negative relationship between changes in the money supply and markups.

Download or read book Accounting for Agent Heterogeneity in Market and Policy Analysis written by Konstantinos Giannakas and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-12-19 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a multi-market framework of market and policy analysis that explicitly accounts for the empirically relevant heterogeneity in consumer preferences and producer characteristics. The explicit consideration of consumer and producer heterogeneity represents a significant departure from the representative consumer and producer that have been at the center of most of the literature on market and policy analysis, and enables the distributional impacts of changes in market conditions and policies to be fully identified. The framework is used to analyze the system-wide market and welfare impacts of a number of changes in market conditions (like changes in consumer preferences, costs and market structure) and policies (like subsidies and taxes) on one of the products in the system. Consistent with a priori expectations, the use of the framework unveils impacts masked by the conventional market and policy analysis.

Download or read book Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality written by Ms.Era Dabla-Norris and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the extent of income inequality from a global perspective, its drivers, and what to do about it. The drivers of inequality vary widely amongst countries, with some common drivers being the skill premium associated with technical change and globalization, weakening protection for labor, and lack of financial inclusion in developing countries. We find that increasing the income share of the poor and the middle class actually increases growth while a rising income share of the top 20 percent results in lower growth—that is, when the rich get richer, benefits do not trickle down. This suggests that policies need to be country specific but should focus on raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring there is no hollowing out of the middle class. To tackle inequality, financial inclusion is imperative in emerging and developing countries while in advanced economies, policies should focus on raising human capital and skills and making tax systems more progressive.

Download or read book Innocent Bystanders Monetary Policy and Inequality in the U S written by Mr.Olivier Coibion and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We study the effects and historical contribution of monetary policy shocks to consumption and income inequality in the United States since 1980. Contractionary monetary policy actions systematically increase inequality in labor earnings, total income, consumption and total expenditures. Furthermore, monetary shocks can account for a significant component of the historical cyclical variation in income and consumption inequality. Using detailed micro-level data on income and consumption, we document the different channels via which monetary policy shocks affect inequality, as well as how these channels depend on the nature of the change in monetary policy.

Download or read book Making Better Policies for Food Systems written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food systems around the world face a triple challenge: providing food security and nutrition for a growing global population; supporting livelihoods for those working along the food supply chain; and contributing to environmental sustainability. Better policies hold tremendous promise for making progress in these domains.

Download or read book Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms written by Andrew B. Bernard and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines how country, industry and firm characteristics interact in general equilibrium to determine nations' responses to trade liberalization. When firms possess heterogeneous productivity, countries differ in relative factor abundance and industries vary in factor intensity, falling trade costs induce reallocations of resources both within and across industries and countries. These reallocations generate substantial job turnover in all sectors, spur relatively more creative destruction in comparative advantage industries than comparative disadvantage industries, and magnify ex ante comparative advantage to create additional welfare gains from trade. The relative ascendance of high-productivity firms within industries boosts aggregate productivity and drives down consumer prices. In contrast with the neoclassical model, these price declines dampen and can even reverse the real wage losses of scarce factors as countries liberalize.

Download or read book Markups Gaps and the Welfare Costs of Business Fluctuations written by Jordi Galí and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper we present a simple, theory-based measure of the variations in aggregate economic efficiency associated with business fluctuations. We decompose this indicator, which we refer to as 'the gap', into two constituent parts: a price markup and a wage markup, and show that the latter accounts for the bulk of the fluctuations in our gap measure. Finally, we derive a measure of the welfare costs of business cycles that is directly related to our gap variable, and which takes into account explicitly the existence of a varying aggregate inefficiency. When applied to postwar U.S. data, for plausible parametrizations, our measure suggests welfare losses of fluctuations that are of a higher order of magnitude than those derived by Lucas (1987). It also suggests that the major postwar recessions involved substantial efficiency costs.

Download or read book The Economics of Artificial Intelligence written by Ajay Agrawal and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-03-05 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely investigation of the potential economic effects, both realized and unrealized, of artificial intelligence within the United States healthcare system. In sweeping conversations about the impact of artificial intelligence on many sectors of the economy, healthcare has received relatively little attention. Yet it seems unlikely that an industry that represents nearly one-fifth of the economy could escape the efficiency and cost-driven disruptions of AI. The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: Health Care Challenges brings together contributions from health economists, physicians, philosophers, and scholars in law, public health, and machine learning to identify the primary barriers to entry of AI in the healthcare sector. Across original papers and in wide-ranging responses, the contributors analyze barriers of four types: incentives, management, data availability, and regulation. They also suggest that AI has the potential to improve outcomes and lower costs. Understanding both the benefits of and barriers to AI adoption is essential for designing policies that will affect the evolution of the healthcare system.

Download or read book Trade and Inequality written by Pinelopi K. Goldberg and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This research review brings together the most influential theoretical and empirical contributions to the topic of trade and inequality from recent years. Segregating the subject into four key areas, it forms a comprehensive study of the subject, targeted at academic readers familiar with the main trade models and empirical methods used in economics. The first two parts cover empirical evidence on trade and inequality in developed and developing countries, while the third and fourth sections confront transition dynamics following trade liberalization and new theoretical contributions inspired by the previously-discussed empirical evidence, respectively. Presented with an extensive original introduction by the editor, Trade and Inequality will be an invaluable tool in the study of this field to advanced undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty alike.

Download or read book The Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters written by Debarati Guha-Sapir and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work combines research and empirical evidence on the economic costs of disasters with theoretical approaches. It provides new insights on how to assess and manage the costs and impacts of disaster prevention, mitigation, recovery and adaption, and much more.

Download or read book The Impact of Economic Policies on Poverty and Income Distribution written by François Bourguignon and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reviews techniques and tools that can be used to evaluate the poverty and distributional impact of economic policy choices. This title describes the most robust techniques and tools, from the simplest to the most complex, and aims to identify best practices. It also addresses an evaluation technique and its applications.

Download or read book Handbook of Pricing Research in Marketing written by Vithala R. Rao and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pricing is an essential aspect of the marketing mix for brands and products. Further, pricing research in marketing is interdisciplinary, utilizing economic and psychological concepts with special emphasis on measurement and estimation. This unique Handbook provides current knowledge of pricing in a single, authoritative volume and brings together new cutting-edge research by established marketing scholars on a range of topics in the area. The environment in which pricing decisions and transactions are implemented has changed dramatically, mainly due to the advent of the Internet and the practices of advance selling and yield management. Over the years, marketing scholars have incorporated developments in game theory and microeconomics, behavioral decision theory, psychological and social dimensions and newer market mechanisms of auctions in their contributions to pricing research. These chapters, specifically written for this Handbook, cover these various developments and concepts as applied to tackling pricing problems. Academics and doctoral students in marketing and applied economics, as well as pricing-focused business practitioners and consultants, will appreciate the state-of-the-art research herein.

Download or read book The Poverty and Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing Channels and Policy Implications written by Baoping Shang and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-06-25 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the poverty and distributional impacts of carbon pricing reforms is critical for the success of ambitious actions in the fight against climate change. This paper uses a simple framework to systematically review the channels through which carbon pricing can potentially affect poverty and inequality. It finds that the channels differ in important ways along several dimensions. The paper also identifies several key gaps in the current literature and discusses some considerations on how policy designs could take into account the attributes of the channels in mitigating the impacts of carbon pricing reforms on households.