Robustness Measures for Welfare Analysis.

Economists routinely make functional form assumptions on demand curves to derive welfare conclusions. How sensitive are these conclusions to such assumptions? In this paper, we develop robustness measures that quantify the extent to which the true demand curve must deviate from common functional for...

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Publicado en:American Economic Review Vol. 115; no. 8; pp. 2449 - 2488
Autores principales: Kang, Zi Yang, Vasserman, Shoshana
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: American Economic Association Aug2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Aug2025
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      pub: American Economic Association
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        10.1257/aer.20220673
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        atl: Robustness Measures for Welfare Analysis.
      aug:
        au:
          Kang, Zi Yang
          Vasserman, Shoshana
        affil:
          Department of Economics, University of Toronto
          Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and NBER
      su:
        Demand function
        Information design
        Curvature
      sug:
        subj:
          Demand function
          Information design
          Curvature
      ab: Economists routinely make functional form assumptions on demand curves to derive welfare conclusions. How sensitive are these conclusions to such assumptions? In this paper, we develop robustness measures that quantify the extent to which the true demand curve must deviate from common functional form assumptions in order to overturn a welfare conclusion. We parametrize this variability in terms of the gradient and curvature of the demand curve. By leveraging tools from information design, we show that our measures are easy to compute. Our measures are also flexible and easy to use, as we illustrate through empirical applications. (JEL D01, D60, F13, H55, Q48)
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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