Measuring the welfare gain from personal computers: a macroeconomic approach

Jeremy Greenwood and Karen Kopecky

No 2011-05, FRB Atlanta Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

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, implying 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 and estimated using standard national income and product account data. The welfare gain from the introduction of personal computers is in the range of 2 percent to 3 percent of consumption expenditure.

Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.frbatlanta.org/documents/pubs/wp/wp1105.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.frbatlanta.org/documents/pubs/wp/wp1105.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.frbatlanta.org/documents/pubs/wp/wp1105.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.atlantafed.org/documents/pubs/wp/wp1105.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Measuring the Welfare Gain from Personal Computers: A Macroeconomic Approach (2011)
Working Paper: Measuring the Welfare Gain from Personal Computers: A Macroeconomic Approach (2007)
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:fip:fedawp:2011-05

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in FRB Atlanta Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Rob Sarwark ().