Risk Preferences and the Welfare Cost of Business Cycles

This paper reexamines the "cost of business cycle" calculations made by Lucas ("Models of Business Cycles," Basil Blackwell, New York, 1987) and Imrohoroglu (J. Polit. Econ. 97 (1989), 1364-1383) under alternative specifications of individuals' risk preferences and using alternative specifications of the stochastic process for per capita consumption. I find that for a class of preferences used by Epstein and Zin (J. Monetary Econom. 26 (1990), 387-407), in an analysis of the equity premium puzzle, which display "first-order" risk aversion, the welfare cost of business cycles is potentially much larger than previous estimates. (C) 1998 Academic Press