IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/vil/papers/40.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Preference Heterogeneity, Inflation, and Welfare

Author

Abstract

This paper assesses the welfare implications of long-run inflation in an environment with essential money, a competing illiquid asset, and potential ex-ante heterogeneity of households with respect to their behavioral measures of risk aversion and elasticity of intertemporal substitution. The results show that the relative liquidity position of households’ portfolio as well as potential inter-cohort transfers of resources can deliver fewer welfare costs to inflation than has been previously reported, and in some instances net welfare benefits to low levels of positive inflation. These results hold in versions of the model calibrated to both US and euro area data.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Patrick Curran & Scott J. Dressler, 2019. "Preference Heterogeneity, Inflation, and Welfare," Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series 40, Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics.
    • Handle: RePEc:vil:papers:40
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.library.villanova.edu/workingpapers/VSBEcon40.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    2. Gabriele Camera & Yili Chien, 2014. "Understanding the Distributional Impact of Long‐Run Inflation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(6), pages 1137-1170, September.
    3. Weil, Philippe, 1989. "The equity premium puzzle and the risk-free rate puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 401-421, November.
    4. Miguel Molico, 2006. "The Distribution Of Money And Prices In Search Equilibrium," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(3), pages 701-722, August.
    5. Kimball, Miles S & Sahm, Claudia R & Shapiro, Matthew D, 2008. "Imputing Risk Tolerance From Survey Responses," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103(483), pages 1028-1038.
    6. Gomes, Fábio Augusto Reis & Paz, Lourenço S., 2013. "Estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution: Is the aggregate financial return free from the weak instrument problem?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 63-75.
    7. Havranek, Tomas & Horvath, Roman & Irsova, Zuzana & Rusnak, Marek, 2015. "Cross-country heterogeneity in intertemporal substitution," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 100-118.
    8. Christian Dreger & Jürgen Wolters, 2009. "Money velocity and asset prices in the euro area," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 51-63, February.
    9. Robert E. Lucas, 2000. "Some Macroeconomics for the 21st Century," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 159-168, Winter.
    10. Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & E. Elisabet Rutström, 2007. "Estimating Risk Attitudes in Denmark: A Field Experiment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 109(2), pages 341-368, June.
    11. Raj Chetty, 2006. "A New Method of Estimating Risk Aversion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1821-1834, December.
    12. Robert B. Barsky & Christopher L. House & Miles S. Kimball, 2007. "Sticky-Price Models and Durable Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 984-998, June.
    13. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 659-684.
    14. Hans-Martin von Gaudecker & Arthur van Soest & Erik Wengstrom, 2011. "Heterogeneity in Risky Choice Behavior in a Broad Population," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 664-694, April.
    15. Dressler, Scott, 2016. "A long-run, short-run, and politico-economic analysis of the welfare costs of inflation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB), pages 255-269.
    16. Larry G. Epstein & Stanley E. Zin, 2013. "Substitution, risk aversion and the temporal behavior of consumption and asset returns: A theoretical framework," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 12, pages 207-239, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    17. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "Intertemporal Substitution in Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 339-357, April.
    18. Yili Chien & Harold Cole & Hanno Lustig, 2016. "Implications of Heterogeneity in Preferences, Beliefs and Asset Trading Technologies in an Endowment Economy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 20, pages 215-239, April.
    19. Javier Diaz-Gimenez & Andrew Glover & José-Víctor Ríos-Rull, 2011. "Facts on the distributions of earnings, income, and wealth in the United States: 2007 update," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    20. Scott J. Dressler, 2011. "A Long-Run, Short-Run and Politico-Economic Analysis of the Welfare Costs of Inflation," Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series 16, Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics.
    21. Eric Swanson, 2018. "Risk Aversion, Risk Premia, and the Labor Margin with Generalized Recursive Preferences," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 28, pages 290-321, April.
    22. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 2003. "Macroeconomic Priorities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 1-14, March.
    23. Russell W. Cooper & John C. Haltiwanger, 2006. "On the Nature of Capital Adjustment Costs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 611-633.
    24. Berentsen, Aleksander & Camera, Gabriele & Waller, Christopher, 2007. "Money, credit and banking," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 171-195, July.
    25. Hans-Martin von Gaudecker & Arthur van Soest & Erik Wengstrom, 2011. "Heterogeneity in Risky Choice Behavior in a Broad Population," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 664-694, April.
    26. Pierre‐André Chiappori & Monica Paiella, 2011. "Relative Risk Aversion Is Constant: Evidence From Panel Data," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(6), pages 1021-1052, December.
    27. Eric T. Swanson, 2012. "Risk Aversion and the Labor Margin in Dynamic Equilibrium Models," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1663-1691, June.
    28. Cozzi, Marco, 2012. "Risk Aversion Heterogeneity, Risky Jobs and Wealth Inequality," Queen's Economics Department Working Papers 274550, Queen's University - Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bagchi, Sutirtha & Curran, Michael & Fagerstrom, Matthew J., 2019. "Monetary growth and wealth inequality," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 23-25.
    2. Cecion, Martina & Coenen, Günter & Gerke, Rafael & Le Bihan, Hervé & Motto, Roberto & Aguilar, Pablo & Ajevskis, Viktors & Giesen, Sebastian & Albertazzi, Ugo & Gilbert, Niels & Al-Haschimi, Alexander, 2021. "The ECB’s price stability framework: past experience, and current and future challenges," Occasional Paper Series 269, European Central Bank.
    3. Uras, Burak R. & van Buggenum, Hugo, 2022. "Preference heterogeneity and optimal monetary policy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Curran, Michael & Dressler, Scott J., 2020. "Preferences, inflation, and welfare," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    2. Gianluca Femminis, 2019. "Risk aversion heterogeneity and the investment–uncertainty relationship," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 127(3), pages 223-264, August.
    3. Marco Cozzi, 2012. "Risk Aversion Heterogeneity, Risky Jobs And Wealth Inequality," Working Paper 1286, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    4. Elminejad, Ali & Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana, 2022. "Relative Risk Aversion: A Meta-Analysis," MetaArXiv b8uhe, Center for Open Science.
    5. Isoré, Marlène & Szczerbowicz, Urszula, 2017. "Disaster risk and preference shifts in a New Keynesian model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 97-125.
    6. Eric Swanson, 2015. "A Macroeconomic Model of Equities and Real, Nominal, and Defaultable Debt," 2015 Meeting Papers 273, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Angelo Melino, 2010. "Measuring the cost of economic fluctuations with preferences that rationalize the equity premium," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(2), pages 405-422, May.
    8. Robert J. Barro, 2009. "Rare Disasters, Asset Prices, and Welfare Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 243-264, March.
    9. Takamizawa, Hideyuki, 2022. "An equilibrium model of the term structures of bonds and equities," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    10. Huh, Sungjun & Kim, Insu, 2021. "Real estate and relative risk aversion with generalized recursive preferences," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    11. Martin Kliem & Alexander Meyer‐Gohde, 2022. "(Un)expected monetary policy shocks and term premia," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(3), pages 477-499, April.
    12. Meissner, Thomas & Pfeiffer, Philipp, 2022. "Measuring preferences over the temporal resolution of consumption uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    13. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    14. Anthony M. Diercks, 2015. "The Equity Premium, Long-Run Risk, & Optimal Monetary Policy," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-87, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Alfonso Irarrazabal & Juan Carlos Parra-Alvarez, 2015. "Time-varying disaster risk models: An empirical assessment of the Rietz-Barro hypothesis," CREATES Research Papers 2015-08, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    16. Evans, Paul & Hasan, Iftekhar, 1998. "The consumption-based capital asset pricing model: International evidence," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 1-21, January.
    17. Tyler Abbot, 2017. "General Equilibrium Under Convex Portfolio Constraints and Heterogeneous Risk Preferences," Papers 1706.05877, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2018.
    18. Daria Pignalosa, 2021. "The Euler Equation Approach: Critical Implications of Recent Developments in the Theory of Intertemporal Choice," Bulletin of Political Economy, Bulletin of Political Economy, vol. 15(1), pages 1-43, June.
    19. Rhys Bidder & Ian Dew-Becker, 2016. "Long-Run Risk Is the Worst-Case Scenario," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2494-2527, September.
    20. Huse, Cristian, 2011. "Term structure modelling with observable state variables," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 3240-3252.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation; Welfare; Recursive Preferences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E41 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Demand for Money
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:vil:papers:40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher Kilby (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edvilus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.