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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Feng, Junlong, Lee, Sokbae
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.01921
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author Feng, Junlong
Lee, Sokbae
author_facet Feng, Junlong
Lee, Sokbae
contents We introduce a novel framework for individual-level welfare analysis. It builds on a parametric model for continuous demand with a quasilinear utility function, allowing for heterogeneous coefficients and unobserved individual-good-level preference shocks. We obtain bounds on the individual-level consumer welfare loss at any confidence level due to a hypothetical price increase, solving a scalable optimization problem constrained by a novel confidence set under an independence restriction. This confidence set is computationally simple and robust to weak instruments, nonlinearity, and partial identification. The validity of the confidence set is guaranteed by our new results on the joint limiting distribution of the independence test by Chatterjee (2021). These results together with the confidence set may have applications beyond welfare analysis. Monte Carlo simulations and two empirical applications on gasoline and food demand demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2304_01921
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Individual Welfare Analysis: Random Quasilinear Utility, Independence, and Confidence Bounds
Feng, Junlong
Lee, Sokbae
Econometrics
We introduce a novel framework for individual-level welfare analysis. It builds on a parametric model for continuous demand with a quasilinear utility function, allowing for heterogeneous coefficients and unobserved individual-good-level preference shocks. We obtain bounds on the individual-level consumer welfare loss at any confidence level due to a hypothetical price increase, solving a scalable optimization problem constrained by a novel confidence set under an independence restriction. This confidence set is computationally simple and robust to weak instruments, nonlinearity, and partial identification. The validity of the confidence set is guaranteed by our new results on the joint limiting distribution of the independence test by Chatterjee (2021). These results together with the confidence set may have applications beyond welfare analysis. Monte Carlo simulations and two empirical applications on gasoline and food demand demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
title Individual Welfare Analysis: Random Quasilinear Utility, Independence, and Confidence Bounds
topic Econometrics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.01921