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1.
John S. Chipman 《International Review of Economics》2006,53(4):451-475
This paper provides explanations for Pareto’s apparently contradictory approach to demand theory in simultaneously insisting
that measurability of utility is not needed to explain the equilibrium of consumers in competitive markets, and embracing
concavifiability and thus measurability of utility when this implies restrictions on consumers’ behavior such as the law of
demand. It also treats his method of calibrating an aggregate demand function by employing his law of income distribution,
so as to reproduce “Gregory King’s law”. Finally, some disputed issues are dealt with concerning the nature of Pareto’s contributions
to welfare economics. (JEL: B13, D11, D60). 相似文献
2.
This paper provides the first real-world evidence of Giffen behavior, i.e., upward sloping demand. Subsidizing the prices of dietary staples for extremely poor households in two provinces of China, we find strong evidence of Giffen behavior for rice in Hunan, and weaker evidence for wheat in Gansu. The data provide new insight into the consumption behavior of the poor, who act as though maximizing utility subject to subsistence concerns. We find that their elasticity of demand depends significantly, and nonlinearly, on the severity of their poverty. Understanding this heterogeneity is important for the effective design of welfare programs for the poor. (JEL D12, O12). 相似文献
3.
王志刚 《经济理论与经济管理》2014,34(5):32-43
吉芬商品源于英国经济学家罗伯特·吉芬对爱尔兰土豆市场规律的特殊认识,具体表现为商品的价格与其销量呈现正向关系。目前,学界突破了对上述吉芬商品的认识,一些学者用吉芬行为来替代之。迄今为止,学界对吉芬行为的探讨就未中断过,其关键在于缺少现实中存在性的证据。由此,本文基于广义虚拟经济的视角,以北京市消费者的家庭服务雇用行为为例,对吉芬行为存在性进行了探析。结果表明,当额外工作时间比率位于01~03之间时,消费者对家庭服务人员雇用时间会随雇用价格的上涨而增加,即存在着吉芬行为。最后,为了规避家庭服务业中存在的“吉芬陷阱”,本文提出相关政策建议。 相似文献
4.
Koichi Kawamoto 《Economic Theory》2009,39(2):269-289
Using an overlapping generations model, this paper investigates the implications of status-seeking behavior, induced by preferences
for relative income, for the evolution of income inequality. When average income rises, an individual’s marginal utility of
their own income may increase (keeping up with the Joneses, or KUJ), or decrease (running away from the Joneses, or RAJ). It is shown that income inequality is shrinking over time in the KUJ economy, whereas it is expanding in the RAJ
economy. We also explore the implications for long-run growth and inequality, in the existence of both KUJ and RAJ agents.
I am truly grateful to Koichi Futagami for his encouragement and guidance in writing this paper. I have benefitted from comments
by an anonymous referee, Been-Lon Chen, Giacomo Corneo, Akiomi Kitagawa, Kazuo Mino, Kazuhiro Yuki, and seminar participants
at Osaka University, the 2006 Japanese Economic Association Autumn Meeting at Osaka City University, the Far Eastern Meeting
of Econometric Society 2007 at Taipei, SER Conference 2007 at Singapore, and the European Meeting of Econometric Society 2007 at
Budapest. All remaining errors are, of course, my own. The financial support from JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientists
is greatly acknowledged. 相似文献
5.
Ahmad E El-Safty 《Journal of Economic Theory》1976,13(2):298-318
This paper extends the work on endogenous change of tastes of Von Weizsäcker to the n-commodity framework and for a general adaptive behavior process. The paper examines the relation between the effect of taste changes to income and price changes. It provides sufficient conditions for stability of the underlying dynamic process, establishes uniqueness of the equilibrium demand vector and some useful relations between the long-run demand functions and the equilibrium short-run demand functions. It is also shown that the long-run demand functions can be rationalized by a utility function if and only if the short-run utility function is such that any good that experiences learning or taste change is separable from all other goods. 相似文献
6.
Optimal Contracts When a Worker Envies His Boss 总被引:3,自引:0,他引:3
A worker's utility may increase with his income, but envy canmake his utility decline with his employer's income. This articleuses a principal-agent model to study profit-maximizing contractswhen a worker envies his employer. Envy tightens the worker'sparticipation constraint and so calls for higher pay and/ora softer effort requirement. Moreover, a firm with an enviousworker can benefit from profit sharing, even when the worker'seffort is fully contractible. We discuss several applicationsof our theoretical work: envy can explain why a lower-levelworker is awarded stock options, why incentive pay is lowerin nonprofit organizations, and how governmental productionof a good can be cheaper than private production. 相似文献
7.
We analyze the potential welfare effect of energy subsidy reforms. The income distributions of eleven developing countries from different geographical regions are simulated using the assumption that income is lognormally distributed. We use the concept of the compensating variation to measure how much compensation is required to compensate consumers for a price increase in formerly subsidized goods. The behavior of consumers is modeled by a standard Cobb–Douglas and a quasilinear utility function. In the Cobb–Douglas case, a fixed fraction of income is spent on the subsidized good, which does not change after a price increase. With quasilinear preferences, the optimal amount of the subsidized good does not vary with income, but does change as prices change. We show theoretically and empirically that the required compensating variation can be set below the saved expenditures on subsidies, so a budget neutral reform can have a positive effect on social welfare. 相似文献
8.
Peter N. Sørensen 《Economic Theory》2007,31(2):367-370
Simple utility functions with the Giffen property are presented: locally, the demand curve for a good is upward sloping. The
utility functions represent continuous, monotone, convex preferences. 相似文献
9.
This paper examines the behavior of a banking firm under risk. The banking firm can hedge its risk exposure by trading futures
contracts. The banking firm is risk averse and possesses a utility function defined over its end-of-period income and a state
variable that denotes the business cycle of the economy. We show that the banking firm optimally opts for an over-hedge or
an under-hedge, depending on whether the returns on the futures contracts are negatively or positively correlated with the
business cycle of the economy, respectively. Thus, the business cycle of the economy is an important determinant in shaping
the banking firm’s optimal hedging strategy. 相似文献
10.
Leonhard K. Lades 《Journal of Evolutionary Economics》2013,23(5):1023-1045
This paper presents a formal model in which differential satiation dynamics of various consumer needs explain (not only describe) the shapes of Engel curves. In the model, individuals allocate their income to various consumption categories proportional to corresponding need deprivation states, a decision making process called matching. The model allows explaining some empirical regularities that other models have difficulties accounting for. It can, for example, reconstruct that income elasticities for food tend to decrease with rising income, and that goods that are luxuries at relatively low income levels can become necessities at higher income levels. Moreover, the paper compares the Engel curves obtained from the matching model with Engel curves obtained from a utility maximization model. While both types of Engel curves are relatively similar at high income levels, at lower income levels matching and maximization lead to very different allocations of income. The paper shows that a given amount of income redistribution leads to less additional welfare when individuals follow matching behavior than when they maximize their utility. Accordingly, to obtain a given amount of additional welfare more income redistribution is needed than a policy maker who (mistakenly) assumes that individuals rationally maximize their utility predicts. 相似文献
11.
Franz Wirl 《Journal of Economics》2011,102(3):193-215
This paper considers externalities and investigates which general properties and respectively their magnitudes induce complex
behavior like thresholds and indeterminacy (and cycles). The objective is to obtain general mechanisms within a general setting
in order to complement the much advanced but model specific literature. It turns out that these arithmetic and simultaneously
economic conditions for thresholds or indeterminacy require complementarity and non-moderate dynamic social influence. In
other words, complexities can be related (necessary and sufficient) to a familiar static property that social interactions
turn the (stationary) demand for the private stock into a Giffen good. Indeterminacy requires in addition ‘low’ subjective
discounting and proper interactions between control, stock and externality. These conditions provide an easy way to construct
models that allow for the targeted outcome, stability, thresholds or indeterminacy. 相似文献
12.
Endowment effect theory,prediction bias and publicly provided goods: an experimental study 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Ivo Bischoff 《Environmental and Resource Economics》2008,39(3):283-296
Many studies report on a systematic disparity between the willingness to pay for a certain good (WTP) and the willingness
to accept retribution payments in exchange for giving up this good (WTA). Thaler [Thaler RH (1980) J Econ Behav Organ 1:39–60]
employs prospect theory to explain this disparity. The literature contains two different interpretations of his endowment
effect theory. Accordingly, the disparity is caused either by the disutility from parting with one’s endowment and/or by an
extra utility from ownership which is not anticipated by individuals who are not endowed with the good. So far, the empirical
evidence on the applicability of endowment effect theory is limited to private goods. This paper reports on an experiment
which finds a significant ownership utility effect for a publicly provided good. This result indicates that prospect theory
applies to publicly provided goods even though consumers do not have exclusive property rights.
相似文献
13.
Tobias Kronenberg 《Spanish Economic Review》2008,10(4):303-320
Traditional wage setting models assume that unions maximise the total income of workers, whereas actually they should maximise
worker utility. These models implicitly equate utility with income, but this is not valid if workers’ utility depends on their
sense of fairness and includes a non-pecuniary benefit from work. This paper presents a model combining efficiency wages with
bargaining theory, drawing inspiration from the gift-exchange approach by Akerlof [Q J Econ 97(4):543–569, 1982]. It shows
that the mutual gift exchange between firms and workers generates a non-pecuniary benefit which contributes to the workers’
utility in a non-monotonic way depending on the strength of workers’ sense of fairness. The model shows that if an employment
subsidy is paid to workers it generates more jobs than when paid to firms.
This paper is based on research which was performed while the author was employed at the University of Maastricht (The Netherlands).
The author wishes to thank Thomas Ziesemer, Erik de Regt, Sabine Fuss and Kristin Vetter for many helpful comments and assumes
full responsibility for any remaining flaws. 相似文献
14.
As is well-known, consumers want to accumulate precautionary savings in the face of income risks when their marginal utility is convex (prudence). In this paper, we explore the effect of the timing of the resolution of income uncertainty on savings. An agent faces uncertainty about his income at date t+2. What is the effect of being informed that the uncertainty will be resolved at date t+1 on the consumption at date t? We show that the effect is positive, if and only if, marginal utility is convex (prudence), when either the risk free rate is equal to the rate of pure preference for the present, or when the utility function is HARA. The intuition is that an early resolution of uncertainty allows for time-diversifying the risk. It therefore plays a role similar to a reduction of the income risk, whose effect on savings is negative under prudence. 相似文献
15.
John Creedy 《Scottish journal of political economy》1998,45(1):99-110
This paper compares the use of equivalent income with that of utility, in the social welfare function, in optimal income tax models. Equivalent income is a money metric welfare measure that, unlike utility, is not affected by monotonic transformations of utility. The use of equivalent income is found to produce an optimal tax rate that is more sensitive to the degree of inequality aversion, compared with the use of utility. With Cobb-Douglas and CES utility functions, the optimal tax rate is the same for utility and equivalent income where relative inequality aversion is unity. When using equivalent incomes, the case for high marginal rates does not depend on the assumption of a very low elasticity of substitution between consumption and leisure. 相似文献
16.
In a neoclassical growth framework with a typical political-economy mechanism, this paper reexamines the relationship between
the income inequality and economic growth by introducing government spending into the production function and the utility
function. It demonstrates that Kuznets’ famous inverted-U shape relationship between inequality and economic growth will hold—the
growth rate will be first increasing with the income inequality before the growth rate decreases with inequality.
__________
Translated from The Journal of World Economy (世界经济), 2005,(5) (in Chinese) 相似文献
17.
Uzi Segal 《Journal of Economic Theory》2007,136(1):197-216
This paper assumes that in addition to conventional preferences over outcomes, players in a strategic environment have preferences over strategies. It provides conditions under which a player's preferences over strategies can be represented as a weighted average of the utility from outcomes of the individual and his opponents. The weight one player places on an opponent's utility from outcomes depends on the players’ joint behavior. In this way, the framework is rich enough to describe the behavior of individuals who repay kindness with kindness and meanness with meanness. The paper identifies restrictions that the theory places on rational behavior. 相似文献
18.
Individual welfare,social deprivation and income taxation 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Summary. In a homogeneous framework where individuals can only be distinguished on the basis of their incomes, we examine the incidence
of taxation on the amount of deprivation felt in the society. We conceive deprivation in terms of utility or well-being rather
than just in terms of income and we measure it by comparing the deprivation profiles arising in the different situations.
We identify the restrictions to be imposed on the utility function which guarantee that a more progressive system of taxes
always results in less social deprivation. We show that, in general, it is not possible to get an equivalence and realize
a social improvement in terms of social deprivation by substituting a more progressive system of taxes for a less progressive
one.
Received: September 20, 1999; revised version: March 6, 2002
RID="*"
ID="*" This paper forms part of the research programme of the TMR network Living Standards, Inequality and Taxation [Contract
No. ERBFMRXCT 980248] of the European Communities whose financial support is gratefully acknowledged. Chakravarty wishes to
express his sincere gratitude to the French Ministry of Education for financing his stay at DELTA during which this paper
was written. The authors would like to thank Stephen Bazen, Nicolas Gravel and an anonymous referee, whose comments have helped
to improve the paper, but they retain sole responsibility for remaining deficiencies.
Correspondence to: P. Moyes 相似文献
19.
Perry Shapiro 《Journal of Economic Theory》1977,16(2):475-480
In a well-known paper Gorman (Econometrica21 (1953)) established that the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an aggregate, or social, utility function, independent of the distribution of income, is that all individuals' income consumption paths be parallel straight lines. Recently Chipman (J. Econ. Theory8 (1974)), building on the paper of Hurwicz and Uzawa (in “Preference Utility and Demand”) has shown that if the distribution of income is proportional and individual preferences are homothetic, aggregate consumption behavior obeys the necessary integrability conditions. It is shown here that the consistency of aggregate behavior can be derived from more general conditions than the ones used by Chipman and Gorman. Examples of demand systems from which aggregate behavior implies a social utility function are provided. It is then shown that if individual demand functions are linear in income—a form employed by both Gorman and Chipman—it is not necessary that the distribution of income be fixed. 相似文献