IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/dyncon/v35y2011i7p1139-1149.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Price uncertainty, saving, and welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Nocetti, Diego
  • Smith, William T.

Abstract

We analyze how commodity price uncertainty affects saving behavior and welfare in a dynamic model with multiple commodities, portfolio hedging, and a preference structure that disentangles ordinal preferences, attitudes towards risk, and attitudes towards intertemporal substitution. We show that the effect of price uncertainty on savings boils down to knowing (1) hf degree of resistance to intertemporal substitution and (2) the effect that uncertainty has on the certainty-equivalent real interest rate. We also show that, if the certainty-equivalent real interest rate is lower with uncertainty, consumers' welfare is also lower.

Suggested Citation

  • Nocetti, Diego & Smith, William T., 2011. "Price uncertainty, saving, and welfare," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 35(7), pages 1139-1149, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:35:y:2011:i:7:p:1139-1149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016518891100042X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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. Dotsey, Michael & Sarte, Pierre Daniel, 2000. "Inflation uncertainty and growth in a cash-in-advance economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 631-655, June.
    3. Kimball, Miles S, 1990. "Precautionary Saving in the Small and in the Large," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 53-73, January.
    4. Richard E. Kihlstrom & Leonard J. Mirman, 1981. "Constant, Increasing and Decreasing Risk Aversion with Many Commodities," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(2), pages 271-280.
    5. Smith, William T., 1999. "Risk, the Spirit of Capitalism and Growth: The Implications of a Preference for Capital," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 241-262, April.
    6. Kantor, Laurence G, 1986. "Inflation Uncertainty and Real Economic Activity: An Alternative Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(3), pages 493-500, August.
    7. Huizinga, John, 1993. "Inflation Uncertainty, Relative Price Uncertainty, and Investment in U.S. Manufacturing," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 25(3), pages 521-549, August.
    8. 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.
    9. Hansen, Lars Peter & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1983. "Stochastic Consumption, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Asset Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(2), pages 249-265, April.
    10. Fischer, Stanley, 1975. "The Demand for Index Bonds," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 83(3), pages 509-534, June.
    11. Kihlstrom, Richard E. & Mirman, Leonard J., 1974. "Risk aversion with many commodities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 361-388, July.
    12. Philippe Weil, 1990. "Nonexpected Utility in Macroeconomics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(1), pages 29-42.
    13. Smith, William T, 2001. "How Does the Spirit of Capitalism Affect Stock Market Prices?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(4), pages 1215-1232.
    14. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 1993. "Consumption Growth, the Interest Rate and Aggregation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 631-649.
    15. A. Sandmo, 1970. "The Effect of Uncertainty on Saving Decisions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 37(3), pages 353-360.
    16. Fama, Eugene F. & Schwert, G. William, 1977. "Asset returns and inflation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 115-146, November.
    17. Frederick V. Waugh, 1944. "Does the Consumer Benefit from Price Instability?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 58(4), pages 602-614.
    18. Bodie, Zvi, 1976. "Common Stocks as a Hedge against Inflation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(2), pages 459-470, May.
    19. Kandel, Shmuel & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1991. "Asset returns and intertemporal preferences," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 39-71, February.
    20. Svensson, Lars E. O., 1989. "Portfolio choice with non-expected utility in continuous time," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 313-317, October.
    21. Miles Kimball & Philippe Weil, 2009. "Precautionary Saving and Consumption Smoothing across Time and Possibilities," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(2‐3), pages 245-284, March.
    22. Chen, Nai-Fu & Roll, Richard & Ross, Stephen A, 1986. "Economic Forces and the Stock Market," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 383-403, July.
    23. Ricardo Reis & Mark W. Watson, 2010. "Relative Goods' Prices, Pure Inflation, and the Phillips Correlation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 128-157, July.
    24. Friedman, Milton, 1977. "Nobel Lecture: Inflation and Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 451-472, June.
    25. Atkeson, Andrew & Ogaki, Masao, 1996. "Wealth-varying intertemporal elasticities of substitution: Evidence from panel and aggregate data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 507-534, December.
    26. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 2003. "Macroeconomic Priorities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 1-14, March.
    27. Cecchetti, Stephen G, 1993. "Inflation Uncertainty, Relative Price Uncertainty, and Investment in U.S. Manufacturing: Comment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 25(3), pages 550-554, August.
    28. Epstein, Larry G & Zin, Stanley E, 1991. "Substitution, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Consumption and Asset Returns: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 263-286, April.
    29. Jonathan Eaton, 1980. "Price Variability, Utility and Savings," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(3), pages 513-520.
    30. Hayne E. Leland, 1968. "Saving and Uncertainty: The Precautionary Demand for Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(3), pages 465-473.
    31. Anne Epaulard & Aude Pommeret, 2003. "Recursive Utility, Endogenous Growth, and the Welfare Cost of Volatility," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 6(3), pages 672-684, July.
    32. Elder, John, 2004. "Another Perspective on the Effects of Inflation Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(5), pages 911-928, October.
    33. Ni, Shawn & Raymon, Neil, 2004. "Price uncertainty and consumer welfare in an intertemporal setting," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(9), pages 1877-1901, July.
    34. Merton, Robert C, 1969. "Lifetime Portfolio Selection under Uncertainty: The Continuous-Time Case," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(3), pages 247-257, August.
    35. Bufman, Gil & Leiderman, Leonardo, 1990. "Consumption and asset returns under non-expected utility : Some new evidence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 231-235, November.
    36. John Huizinga, 1993. "Inflation uncertainty, relative price uncertainty, and investment in U.S. manufacturing," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 521-557.
    37. Debreu, Gerard, 1976. "Least concave utility functions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 121-129, July.
    38. Holland, A Steven, 1986. "Wage Indexation and the Effect of Inflation Uncertainty on Employment:An Empirical Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 235-243, March.
    39. Friend, Irwin & Blume, Marshall E, 1975. "The Demand for Risky Assets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(5), pages 900-922, December.
    40. Turnovsky, Stephen J & Shalit, Haim & Schmitz, Andrew, 1980. "Consumer's Surplus, Price Instability, and Consumer Welfare," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(1), pages 135-152, January.
    41. Holland, A Steven, 1988. "Indexation and the Effect of Inflation Uncertainty on Real GNP," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(4), pages 473-484, October.
    42. Larry Selden, 1979. "An OCE Analysis of the Effect of Uncertainty on Saving under Risk Preference Independence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(1), pages 73-82.
    43. Kreps, David M & Porteus, Evan L, 1978. "Temporal Resolution of Uncertainty and Dynamic Choice Theory," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 185-200, January.
    44. Attanasio, Orazio P & Weber, Guglielmo, 1989. "Intertemporal Substitution, Risk Aversion and the Euler Equation for Consumption," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 99(395), pages 59-73, Supplemen.
    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. Ghassan, Hassan B., 2015. "نموذج النفقة والإعتدال حسب كتابات الشيباني [Spending and Fairness Model Based on the Writing of Shibani]," MPRA Paper 80603, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2016.
    2. Ghassan, Hassan B., 2015. "A Consumer Model and Social Welfare Based on the Writings of Shibani (750-805 AD, 131-189 AH)," MPRA Paper 72441, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 05 Mar 2016.
    3. Jouini, Elyès & Napp, Clotilde & Nocetti, Diego, 2013. "On multivariate prudence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(3), pages 1255-1267.
    4. Ghassan, Hassan B., 2015. "Islamic Consumer Model, Fairness Behavior and Asymptotic Utility," MPRA Paper 67141, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Christophe Gouel, 2014. "Food Price Volatility and Domestic Stabilization Policies in Developing Countries," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Food Price Volatility, pages 261-306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. 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.
    7. Stefan Franz Schubert & Udo Broll, 2015. "Consumption, inflation risk and dynamic hedging," Contemporary Economics, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw., vol. 9(2), June.

    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. Smith, William & Son, Young Seob, 2005. "Can the desire to conserve our natural resources be self-defeating?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 52-67, January.
    2. Diego Nocetti & William T. Smith, 2011. "Precautionary Saving and Endogenous Labor Supply with and without Intertemporal Expected Utility," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(7), pages 1475-1504, October.
    3. Kihlstrom, Richard, 2009. "Risk aversion and the elasticity of substitution in general dynamic portfolio theory: Consistent planning by forward looking, expected utility maximizing investors," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(9-10), pages 634-663, September.
    4. Nocetti Diego & Smith William T, 2010. "Uncertainty, the Demand for Health Care, and Precautionary Saving," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-31, August.
    5. Qiang Zhang, 2004. "Accounting for Human Capital and Weak Identification in Evaluating the Esptein-Zin-Weil Non-Expected Utility Model of Asset Pricing," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-289, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    6. Campbell, John Y, 1993. "Intertemporal Asset Pricing without Consumption Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 487-512, June.
    7. Saltari, Enrico & Ticchi, Davide, 2007. "Risk aversion, intertemporal substitution, and the aggregate investment-uncertainty relationship," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 622-648, April.
    8. Smith, William T., 1999. "Risk, the Spirit of Capitalism and Growth: The Implications of a Preference for Capital," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 241-262, April.
    9. Hardouvelis, Gikas A. & Kim, Dongcheol & Wizman, Thierry A., 1996. "Asset pricing models with and without consumption data: An empirical evaluation," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 267-301, September.
    10. Turnovsky, Stephen J. & Smith, William T., 2006. "Equilibrium consumption and precautionary savings in a stochastically growing economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 243-278, February.
    11. Smith, William T., 1996. "Taxes, uncertainty, and long-term growth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(8), pages 1647-1664, November.
    12. AJ A. Bostian & Christoph Heinzel, 2016. "Consumption Smoothing and Precautionary Saving under Recursive Preferences," FOODSECURE Working papers 44, LEI Wageningen UR.
    13. Pommeret, Aude & Smith, William T., 2005. "Fertility, volatility, and growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 347-353, June.
    14. John Y. Campbell, 2000. "Asset Pricing at the Millennium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1515-1567, August.
    15. Daria Pignalosa, 2019. "On the role of the utility function in the estimation of preference parameters," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(4), pages 793-820, November.
    16. Thomas Douenne, 2020. "Disaster Risks, Disaster Strikes, and Economic Growth: the Role of Preferences," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 38, pages 251-272, October.
    17. Campbell, John Y., 2003. "Consumption-based asset pricing," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 803-887, Elsevier.
    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. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 693-751, September.
    20. Luca De Gennaro Aquino & Sascha Desmettre & Yevhen Havrylenko & Mogens Steffensen, 2024. "Equilibrium control theory for Kihlstrom-Mirman preferences in continuous time," Papers 2407.16525, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.

    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:eee:dyncon:v:35:y:2011:i:7:p:1139-1149. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jedc .

    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.