Note:

Many studies have proved that a model with habit formation can well capture consumers’ responses to monetary policy and thus serves as a better platform for monetary policy analyses. However, most studies on monetary policy of Taiwan neglect habit formation. The goal of this paper is to verify the behavior of habit formation in consumption in Taiwan with the generalized methods of moments (GMM). Following Leith and Malley (2005), we develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model in a closed economy and find that habit formation behavior is significant in Taiwan. The results from GMM estimation are as follows. The estimated value of habit persistence is 0.934, accord with that of other countries. Households would spend about 4 years to set the new wage contracts. Furthermore, it takes about 4.5 years for firms to reset the new price.

No description available.

No description available.

The first chapter investigates whether East German women became used to the requirement of working full-time under communism and thereby continued to work much longer hours than did their counterparts in the West after unification. The second chapter develops a rational habit formation model in labor supply using the idea of habits outlined in the first chapter. I show that the proposed model avoids the extreme behavior observed in the standard model in the literature where in the long-run hours of work could increase indefinitely or decrease to zero over time. The third chapter examines whether disabled elders who have private long-term care insurance consume fewer acute or post-acute Medicare covered services. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

This paper chronicles the creation of the smartphone application, `Waste Not, Want Not'. The application is designed to create sustainable habits and change wasteful behaviors in order to reduce personal waste production. The paper explores related works in the fields of environmental science, psychology, and computer science. These related studies establish the need for an application focused on personal waste reduction and the means to build such an application. The design process for the application follows User Experience Design's four phases: Research, Sketch, Design, and Evaluation. The target audience for the application is surveyed and imagined. Next, a basic outline of the application's functionality is created. From this outline, a prototype of the application is built. This prototype undergoes usability testing. It ranks above the average for each of the three usability metrics: effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. The paper then explores possible expansions and implementations of the application.

[pt] A IS intertemporal, que representa a dinâmica da Demanda Agregada em modelos estruturais que visem avaliar a política monetária, pode ter diferentes formatos dependendo das hipóteses que são feitas a respeito da estrutura da economia. Neste trabalho buscou-se modelar as diferentes hipóteses, tais como formação de hábito de um e dois períodos, de maneira independente da política monetária e testar seu ajuste aos dados. Os resultados indicam que não só é importante introduzir defasagens do hiato do produto na regressão (tanto para aumentar seu poder de explicação quanto para retirar a autocorrelação dos resíduos), como que a taxa de juros só consegue ter coeficiente significantemente diferente de zero se for incluída na regressão a curva de juros nominais futuros. Entretanto, tais resultados são viesados pela amostra escolhida, um período que apresentou uma série de taxa de juros com indícios de não-estacionariedade. / [en] The intertemporal IS equation, which replicate de dynamics of Agregate Demand in structural models that aim to evaluate monetary policy, might take different shapes depending on the assumptions made on the structure of the economy underlying it. In the present work were modeled different hypothesis about the economy, such as habit formation of one and two periods, independent of monetary policy and tested the fit of such equations to the observed data. The results indicate that not only it is important to introduce lags of the output gap in the regression (in order to both elevate its explaining power and to retrieve any autocorrelation of the residuals), and that interest rates can only have a coefficient significantly different from zero if an nominal yield curve is also included. But these results are biased by the time sample used, in which the interest rate were repeatedly raised, and therefore the series suggest some signs of non-stationarity, which may have had some effect in the results.

Testam-se quatro utilidades com o formato S das curvas de saturação - gama, logística, Cauchy e Cauchy modificada - no modelo básico de apreçamento de ativos de Lucas, com séries temporais do mercado americano. Estabelecendo-se um parâmetro que acompanha o nível de consumo per capita , constata-se que todas resolvem o chamado riskfree puzzle. A gama e a Cauchy modificada saem-se melhor no apreçamento dos 25 ativos do portfolio de Fama e French e esta última é eleita a vencedora, pelas suas propriedades assintóticas e por apresentar coeficiente médio (no sentido cross-section) de aversão relativa ao risco na faixa considerada normal (entre 0 e 5). A Cauchy modificada regulariza a utilidade de Constantinides-Cochrane-Campbel, de formação de hábito, permitindo que o trecho abaixo do consumo habitual seja usado, com isso dispensando o uso de truques para impedir que o consumo suavizado ultrapasse o real. Constatou-se a manutenção daquele coeficiente médio dentro da faixa normal, em um nível pouco abaixo do americano, no caso do mercado brasileiro. Nesse sentido de média crosssection, poderia-se dizer que a utilidade aqui proposta resolve o chamado equity premium puzzle. / Four S-shaped utility functions are tested - gamma, logistic, Cauchy and modified Cauchy - on Lucas asset pricing model with American market time series. Establishing a parameter that follows the level of the per capita consumption, it is shown that all of them solve the so called risk free puzzle. The gamma utility and the modified Cauchy are the ones with better pricing power with respect to Fama and French\'s 25 book-to-market portfolio and the last one is elected the winner, for its asymptotic properties and for exhibiting mean (in the cross-section sense) relative risk aversion coefficient inside the accepted normal range (between 0 and 5). The modified Cauchy utility regularizes the habit-formation Constantinides-Cochrane-Campbel utility function, allowing the usage of the stretch below the habit consumption level, thus doing without the need of tricks to forbid the smoothed consumption series from outgrowing the real one. In the Brazilian market, the mean relative risk aversion coefficient also remains inside the acceptable region, on a slightly lower level. In this mean cross-section sense, it might be possible to state that the utility here proposed solves the equity premium puzzle.

Testam-se quatro utilidades com o formato S das curvas de saturação - gama, logística, Cauchy e Cauchy modificada - no modelo básico de apreçamento de ativos de Lucas, com séries temporais do mercado americano. Estabelecendo-se um parâmetro que acompanha o nível de consumo per capita , constata-se que todas resolvem o chamado riskfree puzzle. A gama e a Cauchy modificada saem-se melhor no apreçamento dos 25 ativos do portfolio de Fama e French e esta última é eleita a vencedora, pelas suas propriedades assintóticas e por apresentar coeficiente médio (no sentido cross-section) de aversão relativa ao risco na faixa considerada normal (entre 0 e 5). A Cauchy modificada regulariza a utilidade de Constantinides-Cochrane-Campbel, de formação de hábito, permitindo que o trecho abaixo do consumo habitual seja usado, com isso dispensando o uso de truques para impedir que o consumo suavizado ultrapasse o real. Constatou-se a manutenção daquele coeficiente médio dentro da faixa normal, em um nível pouco abaixo do americano, no caso do mercado brasileiro. Nesse sentido de média crosssection, poderia-se dizer que a utilidade aqui proposta resolve o chamado equity premium puzzle. / Four S-shaped utility functions are tested - gamma, logistic, Cauchy and modified Cauchy - on Lucas asset pricing model with American market time series. Establishing a parameter that follows the level of the per capita consumption, it is shown that all of them solve the so called risk free puzzle. The gamma utility and the modified Cauchy are the ones with better pricing power with respect to Fama and French\'s 25 book-to-market portfolio and the last one is elected the winner, for its asymptotic properties and for exhibiting mean (in the cross-section sense) relative risk aversion coefficient inside the accepted normal range (between 0 and 5). The modified Cauchy utility regularizes the habit-formation Constantinides-Cochrane-Campbel utility function, allowing the usage of the stretch below the habit consumption level, thus doing without the need of tricks to forbid the smoothed consumption series from outgrowing the real one. In the Brazilian market, the mean relative risk aversion coefficient also remains inside the acceptable region, on a slightly lower level. In this mean cross-section sense, it might be possible to state that the utility here proposed solves the equity premium puzzle.

Assume the model is a closed economy, and the shock is from technology progress. This research, based on a real business cycle model, explores the government¡¦s optimal taxation on consumption and labor income under the condition that representative agent¡¦s utility function has consumption externalities as well as leisure externalities. In the following, by changing the value (namely, by setting the consumption and leisure externalities parameter as either positive or negative), this research examines cyclical property of optimal taxation in terms of four situations occurred. The results indicate that, when labor income taxation in the economy is a constant, consumption externalities parameter is negative, leisure externalities parameter is positive, then the consumption taxation is countercyclical at this time; at other times the consumption taxation is procyclical. On the other hand, suppose consumption taxation is a constant, consumption externalities parameter is negative, leisure externalities parameter is positive, or both consumption and leisure externalities parameter are negative, then labor income taxation is countercyclical at this time; at other times the labor income taxation is procyclical.