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Working Paper
Welfare Evaluation in a Heterogeneous Agent Model: How Representative is the CES Representative Consumer?
The present paper investigates the impact of asymmetric price changes on welfare in a model with heterogeneous consumers. I consider consumer heterogeneity a la Anderson et al. (1992). The standard welfare equivalence between the CES representative consumer and the discrete choice model breaks down in presence of asymmetric price changes. In fact, asymmetric variation in prices produce differential gains among heterogeneous consumers. I show that there exists no feasible Kaldor-Hicks income transfer such that the gains are equally redistributed. Intuitively, in presence of decreasing marginal ...
Working Paper
Why Does Consumption Fluctuate in Old Age and How Should the Government Insure it?
In old age, consumption can fluctuate because of shocks to available resources and because health shocks affect utility from consumption. We find that even temporary drops in income and health are associated with drops in consumption and most of the effect of temporary drops in health on consumption stems from the reduction in the marginal utility from consumption that they generate. More precisely, after a health shock, richer households adjust their consumption of luxury goods because their utility of consuming them changes. Poorer households, instead, adjust both their necessary and luxury ...
Working Paper
Luxuries, Necessities, and the Allocation of Time
Households enjoy utility from activities that require a combination of time and goods. We classify activities into two types: luxuries and necessities. Luxuries (necessities) are activities for which time and expenditure shares rise (decline) with income. We develop and estimate a model with nonhomothetic preferences and find that time and goods are substitutable in producing activities. Activities are also substitutable among themselves. Hence, wage and price changes cause large reallocations of time and expenditures across activities. This effect is quantitatively important for welfare ...
Working Paper
Continuous Markov equilibria with quasi-geometric discounting
We prove that the standard quasi-geometric discounting model used in dynamic consumer theory and political economics does not possess continuous Markov perfect equilibria (MPE) if there is a strictly positive lower bound on wealth. We also show that, at points of discontinuity, the decision maker strictly prefers lotteries over the next period's assets. We then extend the standard model to have lotteries and establish the existence of an MPE with continuous decision rules. The models with and without lotteries are numerically compared, and it is shown that the model with lotteries behaves ...
Working Paper
Rationally Inattentive Consumer: An Experiment
This paper presents a laboratory experiment that directly tests the theoretical predictions of consumption choices under rational inattention. Subjects are asked to select consumption when income is random. They can optimally decide to reduce uncertainty about income by acquiring signals about it. The informativeness of the signals directly relates to the cognitive effort required to process the information. We find that subjects? behavior is largely in line with the predictions of the theory: 1) Subjects optimally make stochastic consumption choices; 2) They respond to incentives and changes ...
Working Paper
The Downward Spiral: A Macroeconomic Analysis of the Opioid Crisis
There have been more than 700,000 opioid overdose deaths since 2000. To analyze the opioid epidemic, a model is constructed where individuals choose whether to use opioids recreationally, knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of recreational opioid usage. The model is fit to estimated Markov chains from the US data that summarize the transitions into and out of opioid addiction as well as to a deadly overdose. The epidemic is broken down into two subperiods: 2000-2010 and 2010-2019. The opioid epidemic's drivers, their impact on employment, and the impact ...
Working Paper
Optimal Monetary Policy Under Bounded Rationality
Optimal monetary policy under discretion, commitment, and optimal simple rules regimes is analyzed through a behavioral New Keynesian model. Flexible price level targeting dominates under discretion; flexible inflation targeting dominates under commitment; and strict price level targeting dominates when using optimal simple rules. Stabilizing properties and bounded rationality-independence generally affect the regime's optimality. The policymaker's knowledge of an agent's myopia is decisive, whereas bounded rationality is not necessarily associated with decreased welfare. Several forms of ...
Journal Article
Market Power and Asset Contractibility in Dynamic Insurance Contracts
The authors study the roles of asset contractibility, market power, and rate of return differentials in dynamic insurance when the contracting parties have limited commitment. They define, characterize, and compute Markov-perfect risk-sharing contracts with bargaining. These contracts significantly improve consumption smoothing and welfare relative to self-insurance through savings. Incorporating savings decisions into the contract (asset contractibility) implies sizable gains for both the insurers and the insured. The size and distribution of these gains depend critically on the insurers? ...
Journal Article
Restoring confidence and growth
Working Paper
The Downward Spiral
To analyze the opioid epidemic, we construct a model where individuals, with and without pain, choose whether to misuse opioids knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of opioid use. Markov chains are estimated from the US data for the college and non–college educated that summarize the transitions into and out of opioid addiction as well as to a deadly overdose. We construct a structural model that matches the estimated Markov chains. We also examine the epidemic’s drivers and the impact of medical interventions.