CONSUMPTION GROWTH ACCOUNTING

The methodology in this paper combines an input–output structural decomposition approach with the supply-side perspective of mainstream growth accounting. In explaining the intertemporal change in consumption per worker, three sets of effects are distinguished. First, contributions due to several types of technological changes are considered. Second, effects caused by changes in international trade are discerned. Third, composition effects that reflect structural shifts in demand (including changes in tastes) are quantified. As an empirical illustration, we analyze the developments in the U.K. between 1979 and 1990.     

长假制度一定能促进消费吗——论假日消费的“陷阱”

收入与时间是决定消费的两个最重要因素。因此,单独增加可用时间,不一定能够促进消费。然而,1999年开始的黄金周政策,使得总消费出现了明显的增加。同时,长假导致财富在各部门间发生了明显的转移。     

流动性约束、政府消费替代与中国居民消费波动

本文借用两个相关的模型探讨流动性约束和政府消费替代对于我国居民消费过度波动现象的解释力,发现流动性约束和政府消费分别通过弱化居民消费跨期优化能力和增强其对居民消费替代作用的渠道来增加居民消费波动,且前者的作用强于后者。本文同时发现流动性约束的增加减损居民福利,而政府消费替代比例的增加则能提高居民福利。     

MODELING INTERNATIONAL CONSUMPTION PATTERNS

This article addresses a number of key problems commonly confronted in the literature on international demand analysis. These include data issues and requirements, multistage budgeting, outliers, group heteroskedasticity, and model selection. A two-stage demand system is fit to International Comparison Programme data for 114 countries for nine aggregate categories and eight food sub-categories of goods. Outliers are identified and omitted from the sample. Parameter estimates for the two stages are obtained with a maximum-likelihood procedure that corrects for group heteroskedasticity. Country-specific income and own-price elasticities are calculated and indicate that poor countries are more responsive to changes in income and prices than rich countries. We also find evidence for the strong version of Engel's law; when income doubles, the budget share of food declines by approximately 0.10.     

消费稳定、消费增长与居民福利* ——对于扩大内需的新寓意

城乡居民消费取决于两个视阈的特征：消费波动和消费增长。扩大内需尤其是消费需求一直以来都在致力于促进消费增长,但效果却不理想,而稳定消费作为被忽视的另一个视阈,值得关注吗？本文基于我国省际城乡1985-2011年实际人均消费数据,测度消费增速放缓和消费波动的福利成本,实证分析我国省级城乡层面两种福利成本的大小关系,从定量意义上说明稳定消费为扩大内需不容忽视的新视阈。研究发现,无论是城镇,还是农村,各省份消费波动的福利成本并不必然远小于消费增速放缓的福利成本,相关参数合理取值范围之内,前者大于后者是更为普遍的情形。因此,稳定消费视阈扩大内需具有不容忽视的政策空间,政府应该在把促进消费增长作为扩大内需工作重点的同时,合理兼顾消费稳定。     

MEASURES OF TOTAL HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION

By expenditure on education, health, housing and other public services, governments provide many goods and services which are alternatives to, or additional to, household expenditure on consumption. In most Western national accounts, the two forms of consumption are rigidly separated. Yet the combination of the two–the concept of total household consumption–has obvious importance for the measurement and comparison of living standards and for the formulation and analysis of policy. This concept is recommended as an additional aggregate in the revised SNA. It is displayed in the UN International Comparison Project (ICP). It is used as a major aggregate ("total consumption of the population"), although hitherto generally excluding nonmaterial services, in the Material Product System. Yet it is rarely shown explicitly in Western national accounts. One reason is the slow progress in the analysis by purpose of government expenditure.
This paper shows how far figures of total household consumption, and of its division between collective and private consumption, can in fact be derived, for the advanced countries, from the data provided to the UN Yearbook of National Accounts , supplemented b y the ICP. The results show first the wide national variations in the relation between the two forms of consumption but, secondly, the gaps in information on this crucially important topic. The relation between direct government expenditure for collective consumption and transfer payments to households ("social income") is also examined. High and low levels of these two forms of State support to consumption reinforce each other almost as often as they offset each other. But, again, the data provided by national accounting statistics are very incomplete.
This paper was prepared for the 16th General Conference of the IARIW, August 1979.     

HOUSE PRICES AND CONSUMPTION INEQUALITY

I characterize how house price shocks affect consumption inequality using a life cycle model of housing and nonhousing consumption with incomplete markets. I derive analytical expressions for the dynamics of inequalities and use these to analyze large house prices swings seen in the United Kingdom. I show that movements in consumption inequality were large, that they correspond with the theoretical predictions qualitatively, and that the model explains a large fraction of the movements quantitatively. I demonstrate the accuracy of this analysis using an extended model's full nonlinear solution. Finally, accounting for house price shocks alters estimates of labor–income risks using cross‐sectional data.     

城镇化、城乡消费比例和结构对居民消费间接CO2排放的影响*

本文利用投入-产出分析法计算了我国居民消费间接CO2排放量,并应用结构分解分析（SDA）方法分析了城镇化、城乡消费比例、消费结构等因素对居民消费间接CO2排放的影响。研究结果发现：（1）城镇化的扩张和消费结构的升级是增加我国居民消费间接CO2排放的重要因素,尤其是食品、居住和交通通讯是导致居民消费间接CO2排放的主要部门;（2）城乡消费比例和排放强度对居民消费间接CO2排放具有明显的抑制作用;（3）人均消费的提高对居民消费间接CO2排放增长贡献最大。最后,本文基于实证结果提出了减少我国居民消费间接CO2排放的政策建议。     

消费函数的收入阶层假说

本文基于经典消费函数的两个基本变量，融合收入分配理论，构建消费函数的收入阶层假说。这一假说为政府制定扩大居民消费的政策措施提供了理论依据。     

CASH INCENTIVES AND UNHEALTHY FOOD CONSUMPTION

This paper studies the effectiveness of taxes, subsidies and cash incentives in reducing unhealthy food consumption. Using an inter‐temporal rational choice model with habit, we calibrate and simulate the effect of those policies to US and UK data. Our findings suggest that cash incentives may be the most effective policy in reducing unhealthy food consumption. However, when comparing the reduction in costs for the social security system with the implementation costs, cash incentives can lead to significant monetary losses. Taxes are relatively ineffective in reducing unhealthy food consumption. Finally, subsidies have the best balance between effectiveness and monetary benefits to society.     

ENDOGENOUS FERTILITY AND THE CONSUMPTION TAX*

The differential incidence between the consumption tax and the labour income tax is examined in a model where altruistic parents decide the number of children endogenously. In contrast with past results, the consumption tax is not neutral and exerts distortional effects. As a result, welfare gets worse off through the tax reform of switching from a labour income tax to a consumption tax. This provides the argument about the treatment of bequests under a consumption tax.     

GROWTH AND BUBBLES WITH CONSUMPTION EXTERNALITIES*

This paper explores the role of consumption externalities in an overlapping generations economy with capital accumulation. If consumers in each generation are concerned with other agents’ consumption behaviours, there exist intergenerational as well as intragenerational consumption externalities. It is the presence of intergenreational consumption externalities that may produce fundamental effects both on equilibrium dynamics and on steady‐state characterization of the economy. This paper demonstrates this fact in the context of a simple model of endogenously growing, overlapping‐generations economy with or without asset bubbles.     

POPULATION AGING AND CONSUMPTION INEQUALITY IN JAPAN

This paper analyses how consumption inequality within a fixed cohort grows with age using Japanese household microdata. Following the method developed by Deaton and Paxson (1994), we obtain the following results. First, consumption inequality starts to increase at the age of 40. Second, younger generations face a more unequal distribution from the beginning of their life-cycle. Third, half of the rapid increase in the economy-wide consumption inequality during the 1980s was caused by population aging, while one-third was due to the increasing cohort effect. The paper compares the above results with those of Deaton and Paxson.     

OPTIMAL INVESTMENT MODELS WITH MINIMUM CONSUMPTION CRITERIA

This paper considers a max-min formulation of multistage optimal investment and consumption problems, with uncertainties in the form of variable productivities of capital and interest rates. The criterion of control performance is minimum consumption over time, weighted by a coefficient which indicates the likelihood of possible disturbance sequences. A dynamic programming method is used. Explicit results for a max-min formulation of the Merton portfolio optimisation problem are obtained. A production-consumption-debt model arising in international finance is also considered.     

PREPAID ELECTRICITY PLAN AND ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR

By using customer‐level residential billing data from 2008 to 2010 of a major utility company in Phoenix metropolitan area, this study adopts a matching approach and a difference‐in‐differences method to estimate empirically the impact of a prepaid electricity plan on residential electricity consumption, after correcting for selection bias. Results show that the prepaid program is associated with a 12% reduction in electricity usage, customers with lower level of wealth or those with higher amount of arrearage prior to switching to the prepaid program tend to save more electricity after switching, and prepaid customers save more electricity in the summer than winter. (JEL L94, Q41)     

NEOCLASSICAL GROWTH AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONSUMPTION

Abstract.  The neoclassical growth model is used to compare an economy with growing per capita income with an economy with stationary per capita income, in terms of equity in distribution of consumption. The economies have the same initial conditions including the same initial wealth distribution. The outcome of the comparison depends on the nature of structural differences between the economies. Even with convergence in wealth distribution in the growing economy, the consumption distribution there may be less equitable and dynasties with least initial levels of wealth may be worse off than dynasties with same initial wealth levels in the stationary economy.