Applied General Equilibrium (AGE) models are increasingly used for short-run commodity market analysis, although they are generally not designed for such purposes. This study remedies a key shortcoming of such work by incorporating a commodity stockholding model into a short-run global AGE model. An approach to calibrating and validating the model is demonstrated for the staple grains sector. I...

This paper advocates computable general equilibrium (CGE) models as an analytical framework that is suitable for assessing the impacts of policy interference on the three dimensions of Sustainable Development, i.e. environmental quality, economic performance and equity. Methodological extensions of standard CGE models are illustrated that may strengthen the role of CGE models in measuring polic...

The number of Internet news media outlets has grown rapidly in recent years. This paper analyzes the effects of media proliferation on electoral outcomes and social welfare. We assume voters are information-seeking but choose outlets that are excessively partisan given the voters’ own ideological preferences, due to quasi-rationality. We find that if voters who think (correctly or not) that the...

The paper assesses the welfare effects of different ways of allocating input price risk between a regulated utility, consumers and speculators in a futures market. A risk-averse utility setting a fixed retail price requires a price that exceeds expected marginal cost, unless an efficient futures market is available. The firm bears no risk when input price risk is transferred to consumers, but c...

We compare state-of-the-art implementation of Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA) and Cost Utility Analysis (CUA) as tools for making priorities in allocation of national public funds in the transport sector and health sector, respectively, in Sweden. While the principal distinctions between these methods are well known, less notice has been given to a number of other differences that have emerged as n...

A large variety of markets, such as retail markets for gasoline or mortgage markets, are characterized by a small number of firms offering a fairly homogenous product at virtually the same cost, while consumers, being uninformed about this cost, sequentially search for low prices. The present paper provides a theoretical examination of this type of market, and confronts the theory with data on ...

This paper answers the question posed in the title within a model where agents receive idiosyncratic, wage-rate shocks that are privately observed. When the model social insurance system is comprised by the US social security and income tax system, then the maximum ex-ante welfare gain to improved insurance is equivalent to a 12.3 percent increase in consumption. We determine the reasons behind...

This paper analyzes the impact of carbon taxes on the Japanese economy using an applied/computable general equilibrium model. This analysis sheds light on both the efficiency and the equity issues of these policies. The study shows that some alleviation measures, e.g. tax differentiation, might be required to ease the damages caused to energy intensive industries. Moreover, considering the regr...

The size distributions of many economic variables seem to obey the double power law, that is, the power law holds in both the upper and the lower tails. I explain this emergence of the double power law—which has important economic, econometric, and social implications—using a tractable dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents subject to aggregate and idiosyncratic ...

We investigate the importance of “what”-flexibility on top of “where”and “when”-flexibility for alternative emission control schemes that prescribe long-term temperature targets and eventually impose additional constraints on the rate of temperature change. We find that “what”-flexibility substantially reduces the compliance costs under alternative emission control schemes. When comparing polic...