On the welfare costs of business cycles: Beyond nondurable goods

Abstract

This paper constitutes the first effort to measure the welfare costs of economic cycles considering that the consumer derives utility from the consumption of nondurable goods and services and the stock of durable goods. To accomplish such a task, we put forward a novel approach based on a nonseparable utility function. As a result, we take into account the complementarities among the consumption categories and the correlations of the shocks in those series. Our findings for the U.S. economy suggest that the single-good approach in the literature tends to underestimate the welfare costs of business cycles.