Measuring the Welfare Gain from Personal Computers: A Macroeconomic Approach

Jeremy Greenwood () and Karen A. Kopecky ()

No 13592, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The welfare gain to consumers from the introduction of personal computers is estimated here. A simple model of consumer demand is formulated that uses a slightly modified version of standard preferences. The modification permits marginal utility, and hence total utility, to be finite when the consumption of computers is zero. This implies that the good won't be consumed at a high enough price. It also bounds the consumer surplus derived from the product. The model is calibrated/estimated using standard national income and product account data. The welfare gain from the introduction of personal computers is about 2 to 4 percent of consumption expenditure.

JEL-codes: E01 E21 O33 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
Date: 2007-11
Note: EFG PR
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13592.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13592

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13592
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

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