Using Asset Prices to Measure the Cost of Business Cycles

No 7978, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We propose a method to measure the welfare cost of economic fluctuations that does not require full specification of consumer preferences and instead uses asset prices. The method is based on the marginal cost of consumption fluctuations, the per unit benefit of a marginal reduction in consumption fluctuations expressed as a percentage of consumption. We show that this measure is an upper bound for the benefit of reducing all consumption fluctuations. We also clarify the link between the cost of consumption uncertainty, the equity premium, and the slope of the real term structure. To measure the marginal cost of fluctuations, we fit a variety of pricing kernels that reproduce key asset pricing statistics. We find that consumers would be willing to pay a very high price for a reduction in overall consumption uncertainty. However, for consumption fluctuations corresponding to business cycle frequencies, we estimate the marginal cost to be about 0.55% of lifetime consumption based on the period 1889-1997 and about 0.30% based on 1954-97.

JEL-codes: E32 G12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-10
Note: AP EFG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Published as Alvarez, Fernando and Urban J. Jermann. "Using Asset Prices To Measure The Persistence Of The Marginal Utility Of Wealth," Econometrica, 2005, v73(6,Nov), 1977-2016. Also Fernando Alvarez & Urban J. Jermann. "Using Asset Prices to Measure the Cost of Business Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(6), pages 1223-1256, December 2004.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7978.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Using Asset Prices to Measure the Cost of Business Cycles (2004)
Working Paper: Using Asset Prices to Measure the Cost of Business Cycles (2000)
Working Paper: Using Asset Prices to Measure the Cost of Business Cycles (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7978

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7978

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().