不確實性下에서 財政政策과 金融政策의 厚生費用分析

The Welfare Cost of Uncertain Fiscal and Monetary Policy

The paper examines the welfare loss suffered by households as a result of uncertain fluctuations in tax rates, inflation and government spending. Households are modeled as consisting of two groups, rich and poor, where the poor are borrowing constrained and do not accumulate any savings to cushion aggregate earning shocks. Despite this feature, the welfare cost attributable solely to random fluctuations in tax rates and inflation is generally quite small, even for high levels of risk aversion. However, the welfare cost is significantly increased if fluctuations in taxes are transmitted to variability in government provision of public goods, where public goods provide directly utility to households. In this case, the welfare cost can be very large, depending crucially on the marginal rate of substitution between public and private goods in the household utility function. In all cases examined, the welfare cost of uncertain government policy dominates the welfare cost of business cycle fluctuations.