On an optimal consumption problem for p-integrable consumption plans

A generalization is presented of the existence results for an optimal consumption problem of Aumann and Perles [4] and Cox and Huang [10]. In addition, we present a very general optimality principle. Received: July 14, 1999; revised version: September 9, 1999     

Relative consumption benchmarks

I construct a general, multi-good model of consumption externalities that allows for relative jealousies and relative keeping-up-with-the-Joneses effects. These relative social consumption contexts have the ability to reinforce or mitigate each other.     

Weintraub's consumption coefficient

The author contends that Weintraub's consumption coefficient,the ratio of total consumer expenditure to income from employment,cannot help to elucidate trends in the sectoral and functionaldistributions of income. Nor can it enhance the Kalecki's macroeconomicmodel. It cannot do either of these things because it is distributiondetermined, not distribution determining. Further, it is arguedthat the use of Weintraub's consumption coefficient distractsus from basing our analysis of income distribution on businessmark-ups, which lie at the core of the Kaleckian research program.     

Market consumption and hidden consumption. A test for substitutability

Previous studies point to a generally efficient baseball betting market with no profitable betting strategies. However, failure to consider the time of year in which the bets are placed neglects differences in available information throughout the season. This analysis largely confirms the general efficiency of the major league baseball betting market by existing measures; however, incorporating the time of the year in which the bet is made generates persistent profitable betting strategies. The process by which information impacts returns is considered; increasing difficulties in determining the true favourite likely play the largest role, while assessing the exact favourite underdog relationship also has an impact.     

Understanding consumption patterns

The analysis of consumer demand is one of the major successes of economics as it represents the near perfect marriage of theory and econometrics. This paper reviews, distills and systematises some of the major empirical findings on consumption patterns, concentrating in particular on the more recent (and, in some cases, more controversial) evidence. One of the key conclusions of the paper is that on the basis on new methods, the hypotheses of homogeneity, symmetry and preference independence are not at such wide variance with the data as was once thought to be the case.     

住房消费、收入分配与中国的消费需求不足

消费需求不足是中国目前经济增长结构的基本特征。本文通过对中国的居民消费支出率的重新度量,发现近年来中国的居民支出占GDP的比重相当稳定。在关于消费需求与劳动者报酬率的地区、城乡结构性特征分析的基础上,论文提出了提高劳动者报酬率、促进中国需求导向型经济增长必须要处理好的四个基本关系。     

Comparing international consumption patterns

When attempting to identify empirical regularities in consumption patterns, their tremendous diversity across countries represents both a major opportunity and challenge. For example, consumers in rich countries devote less than 20% of their budget to food, while this rises to more than 50% in the poorest countries. This paper uses a major new database released in Selvanathan and Selvanathan (Selvanathan EA, Selvanathan S (2003) International Consumption Comparisons: OECD versus LDC. World Scientific, Singapore) to explore several related issues, including the extent to which the consumption basket is diversified and how this changes with income, whether a simple utility-maximising model is capable of explaining the diversity of consumption patterns internationally, the measurement of the extent to which tastes differ across countries, and how the world can be partitioned into groups of countries with minimal within-group heterogeneity of tastes on the basis of the revealed preference of consumers.

Collective consumption and welfare

Abstract.  In this paper, we present a collective model of household demand based on Pareto‐efficiency. In addition, we suppose that (a) each household member is egoistic and consumption is purely private, (b) there is a set of distribution factors and (c) there is one exclusive good. Then we derive the testable restrictions that are implied by this theoretical setting and show how welfare comparisons at the individual level can be performed. JEL classification: D11     

Rationally inattentive consumption choices

This paper analyzes how information-processing limitations affect consumption in a dynamic full-fledged non-linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) setting. In the model, risk-averse consumers rationally choose the quantity and quality of information to process about their wealth, while constrained by a Shannon channel. The main contribution of the paper is methodological. It proposes a solution to rational inattention problems in rich theoretical environments. The main prediction of the model is that consumption responses to wealth shocks are asymmetric, with negative shocks producing faster and stronger reaction than positive shocks. The model also predicts that information-processing constraints increase persistence and volatility of consumption behavior.     

Unemployment and consumption patterns

In this paper we obtain empirical evidence about the effect of female and male unemployment on household demand of a selection of goods and services. We analyse the percentage of the family income expenditure on a particular group of goods concerning education, domestic services, leisure goods, hotels etc. The impact of several determinants on each group of commodities is estimated using a Tobit specification. The data used for estimation have been taken from The Household Expenditure Survey (1990–91). Our main result is that male and female unemployment has a different impact on the household consumption.     

休闲消费的多维解读

半个世纪以来,休闲消费在世界范围之内得到了迅猛发展,它成了一个国家第三产业发展状态的明显表征,甚至成了一个社会文明程度的表征,同时,它已成为社会经济的新的增长点。在全球金融危机,经济衰退的大背景下,对其进行认真研究具有十分重要的现实意义。文章主要探讨了休闲消费的内涵、特征、动机以及功能。     

Life insurance and consumption

Life insurance is a very efficient form of saving for contingencies. This letter argues that under certain conditions it may be even more efficient than intended and desirable, by virtually severing the connection between income and consumption.     

Broadband adoption and content consumption

We explore how broadband access drives changes in the quantity and diversity of consumption of online content by using panel data that describes household Internet usage before and after broadband adoption. Our data suggests that on average, broadband adoption increases usage by over 1300 min per month. We also find that information consumption becomes more evenly distributed within the population, driven in part by post-adoption usage gains of almost 1800 min per month among individuals who were in the lowest usage quintile before adopting broadband. After adopting broadband, this pre-adoption lowest-usage quintile consumes content in greater quantities than users in neighboring quintiles, passing both the second and third quintiles in terms of absolute usage. This suggests that these users may have had strong preferences for high-bandwidth content that was too costly to consume in a narrowband environment. We also show that broadband adoption increases the variety of content that users consume although many of these gains appear to be associated with an increase in the variety of sites visited within previously visited content categories rather than an expansion in the types of content consumed.     

Understanding alcohol consumption across countries

ABSTRACT

With unpublished data from the International Comparison Program that cover the consumption of three alcoholic beverages in over 150 countries, we analyse drinking patterns around the world with an index-number approach, by estimating a demand system, and by studying the interaction among beverages in generating utility. We consider a separate demand system for each income quartile and find that tastes are not too different across quartiles. Broadly speaking, the results are robust to rolling sub-samples of countries, an alternative demand model and sample selectivity issues. The differences in the cost of alcohol across countries are also investigated, as is its role in affecting the degree of price-sensitivity of consumption.     

Local elections and consumption insurance

During our sample period from 1987 to 2002, Chinese villages completed the transition from government‐appointed village leaders to elected ones. This article examines if and how much democratic elections of the village leaders affected consumption insurance by Chinese village residents. Exploring a panel dataset of 1,400 households from this period, we find that consumption insurance is around 20 percent more complete with elected village leaders. Furthermore, local elections improve consumption insurance only for the poor and middle‐income farmers, but not for the rich. The results are robust when we allow for pretrending, potential endogeneity of elections, and higher measurement errors for rich residents. We also find that the effects on consumption insurance are stronger when closer to the upcoming election year and when the village committees consist largely of non‐Communist Party members. These findings suggest that the election effects on consumption insurance partly come from increasing accountability to local constituents.     

Divisia moments of Australian consumption

Quarterly Australian consumption data, 1959–1978, are used to compute Divisia price and quantity indexes, together with Divisia variances and covariances. The quantity variances tend to exceed the price variances, and the price-quantity covariances are mostly negative. Estimates of the income flexibility are also presented.     

Jurisdictional fragmentation equalizes housing consumption

If a homogeneous tract of land is divided into separate jurisdictions, each containing a different income class, then in equilibrium all residents will consume identical housing, regardless of income. This result depends on the property tax being used to finance the local public sector, and per capita costs of the public good being independent of population. Profit maximization by land developers is also required.     

Medical consumption over the life-cycle

We investigate the association between age and medical spending in the U.S. using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. We estimate a partially linear seminonparametric model and construct “pure” life-cycle profiles of health spending simultaneously controlling for time effects (i.e., institutional changes and business cycles effects) and cohort effects (i.e., generation specific conditions). We find that time and cohort effects together introduce a significant estimation bias into predictions of health expenditures per age group, especially for individuals older than 60 years. The estimation bias introduced by cohort effects increases monotonically with age while the bias due to time effects is not significant. The overall effect of Medicare on the cohort and time effects biases is negligible.     

Long-run growth and government consumption

This paper tests the null hypothesis implied by exogenous growth that the share of government consumption in output affects the level of output but not its growth rate against the alternative hypothesis implied by endogenous growth that the growth rate is also affected. The results provide evidence that cross-country differences in income per capita result from differences in their public policies, but no evidence that differences in trend growth rates result.     

Canadian consumption and portfolio shares

In this paper we gauge consumption and portfolio shares, rather than the traditional pricing implications. We study both aggregated (financial, tangible, and human) and disaggregated (deposits, stocks, insurance, and pensions) assets. The empirical shares are computed from recent aggregate Canadian data. The theoretical shares are constructed from a flexible specification of both investors' preferences and investment opportunities. Our results reveal that the theoretical shares statistically match observed consumption and aggregated assets, but not disaggregated assets. Also, our findings for corporate stocks are consistent with the empirical asset returns literature. Finally, our findings for other assets highlight several new striking features. JEL classification: G11
Consommation et parts de porte feuille au Canada. Cette recherche analyse la consommation et les parts de portefeuille, plutôt que les prix des actifs. Nous étudions les actifs agrégés (i.e., financiers, tangibles et humains) ainsi que désagrégés (i.e., dépôts, actions et caisses de retraite et assurance). Les parts empiriques sont calculées pour des données agrégées canadiennes récentes. Les parts théoriques sont construites à partir d'un modèle flexible en ce qui a trait aux préférences et aux possibilités d'investissement. Nos résultats démontrent que les parts théoriques reproduisent la consommation et les parts agrégées, mais pas les parts désagrégées. Aussi, nos résultats sont cohérents avec ceux de la littérature empirique sur les rendements. Nos résultats concernant les autres actifs identifient d'autres aspects caractéristiques.