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Welfare Costs of Business Cycles

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The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
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Abstract

The welfare cost of business cycles measures the benefits that would be obtained by individuals from eliminating all the macroeconomic instability in a given economy. In a seminal paper, Lucas (Models of business cycles. Yrjo Jahnsson Lectures. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985) argued that these benefits are almost certain to be trivially small, especially when they are compared with the benefits that can be achieved with more growth for the post-war US economy.

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Imrohoroglu, A. (2018). Welfare Costs of Business Cycles. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2143

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