Eudaimonic well-being,inequality, and health: Recent findings and future directions

The theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of a eudaimonic model of well-being are examined, and its empirical translation into distinct dimensions of well-being is described. Empirical findings have documented aging declines in eudaimonic well-being, but there is considerable variability within age groups. Among older adults who remain purposefully engaged, health benefits (reduced morbidity, extended longevity) have been documented. Eudaimonic well-being also appears to offer a protective buffer against increased health risks among the educationally disadvantaged. Neural and genetic mechanisms that may underlie eudaimonic influences on health are briefly noted, and interventions designed to promote eudaimonic well-being are sketched. Needed future research directions include addressing problems of unjust societies wherein greed among privileged elites may be a force compromising the eudaimonic well-being of those less privileged. Alternatively, and more positive in focus, is the need to better understand the role of the arts, broadly defined, in promoting eudaimonic well-being across all segments of society.     

Toward a theory of ecosystem well-being

Can the main methods of social welfare analysis be extended to cover multiple species? Following a non-anthropocentric approach, we examine the pros and cons of various objective and subjective methods of well-being comparisons across species. We argue against normalizing by specific capacities but in favor of taking account of individual preferences and specializations. While many conceptual and practical difficulties remain, it appears possible to develop methods for the assessment of collective well-being of multi-species communities and ecosystems.

     

Consumer Inventory and Demand for Storable Goods: New Evidence from a Consumer Survey

In this study, I provide new evidence on consumer inventory from a unique survey on the purchase and inventory of a storable product. I confirm that the predictions regarding the correlations between the key variables of purchase probability, purchase quantity and inventory derived from the standard dynamic models of consumer inventory are consistent with the data. Furthermore, I find that the amount of daily consumption varies within a household across time and depends on inventory holding. The evidence does not conform to a constant consumption rate, which studies often assume for tractability.     

消费信贷难点

<正> 消费信贷是金融机构采用信用放款或抵押放款的方式向消费者发放的一种贷款,是消费信用的主要形式。它既是利用信贷手段促进商品销售的有效方式,也是启动消费品市场,提高资源利用率,促进消费结构和主业结构升级的有力杠杆。因此我国政府、银行、企业和理论界都十分重视消费信贷的发展,特别是自中国人民银行总行1999年《关于开展个人消费信贷的指导意见》下发以来,以住房贷款为主的个人消费信贷业务更是进入了前所未有的快速发展阶段。到2001年底,全国个人消费贷款当年新增2592亿元,占贷款新增总额的19.4％,其业务范围也逐步扩展到了汽车、教育、旅游、高档家电、住宅装修、医疗保险等领域。但从整体而言,目前我国消费信贷发展状况并不理想,其效果和经营效益与西方发达国     

Consumer behaviour in Austria

Zusammenfassung Mit dieser Arbeit wollen wir vor allem zwei Fragen beantworten. Führen verschiedene Ansätze zur Erklärung des Konsumentenverhaltens letztlich zu ähnlichen Schätzwerten für Einkommens- und Preiselastizitäten, so daß es nicht von übermäßiger Bedeutung ist, für welchen Ansatz man sich entscheidet. Verursachte die Rezession von 1975 eine Änderung im Verhalten der Konsumenten, wie dies manchmal unterstellt wurde. Um diese Fragen zu klären, testeten wir vier gängige Konsumtheorien mit österreichischen Daten, und zwar eine in den Logarithmen lineare Konsumfunktion, die Theorie der Konsumgewohnheiten vonBrown, das Modell vonHouthakker—Taylor und den Ansatz vonCoen—Hickman. Die Auswahl dieser Ansätze zur Erklärung des Konsumentenverhaltens erfolgte nicht rein willkürlich. Ursprünglich beabsichtigten wir alle bedeutenden Konsumtheorien zu testen. Dieses Vorhaben scheiterte aber daran, daß die dafür benötigten Daten in Österreich zur Zeit noch nicht vorhanden sind. Wir mußten uns daher mit einem Test der oben erwähnten Konsumtheorien zufrieden geben.

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Contributed paper presented at the European Meeting of the Econometric Society, Vienna, September 6–9, 1977.     

Testing evolutionary theory of household consumption behavior in the case of novelty - a product characteristics approach

This article tests and extends the evolutionary theory of household consumption behavior, which is an alternative to neoclassical theory. Evolutionary economists offer novel approaches to the analysis of consumption behavior that emphasize the major role of learning in the evolution of consumer preferences and wants. As a possible inspiration for further progress in evolutionary thought, this paper examines the idea of consumer learning by studying the nature of what consumers should learn in the context of ‘novelty’. Our empirical results regarding novelty during the learning process show that consumers learn the ‘new characteristics’ of consumer goods, contrary to the Lancasterian approach, which suggests that the characteristics space of goods is fixed. We show that during the process of consumption, ‘consumer learning’ extends the characteristics space of consumer goods; this phenomenon is far from negligible and differs across product types. Moreover, our results show that the emergence of new characteristics cannot be modeled as a Poisson process because these new characteristics exhibit clear interdependence over time.     

The Consumer Tax Equivalent of a Tariff with Imperfect Substitutes

In estimating the Consumer Tax Equivalent (CTE) and Producer Subsidy Equivalent (PSE) of a tariff, it is often assumed that the imported good is a perfect substitute for the relevant locally made good. However, in evaluating the economy-wide effects of a change in tariff using general equilibrium models, it is common to assume that the imported good is an imperfect substitute (so-called Arming-ton assumption)¹ This paper estimates CTE assuming imperfect substitution in order to be consistent with the assumption commonly used in general equilibrium models. It shows how estimates of the CTE and PSE are sensitive to assumptions about the substitution elasticity of demand and the price elasticity of supply for the locally made good.     

后金融危机阶段消费者行为变化研究

2008年由美国次贷危机引发的全球性金融危机,不仅对全球的经济、社会、文化产生了巨大影响,而且促使消费者行为发生了明显的变化.采取网络问卷调查的方式对金融危机前后我国消费者消费行为变化进行对比发现:消费者在购买介入程度方面以高度介入为主,消费者购买行为相对危机前更加理性,同时消费者购买渠道多样化趋向明显.而产生这些变化的原因是后金融危机阶段消费者收入的减少、人们消费观念的变革、政府政策的引导以及消费者个人心理的变化等因素共同作用的结果.由于消费对生产具有反作用,消费行为的变化对人们消费方式的变革、经济结构的调整以及整个国民经济的发展具有重要的影响.研究消费者行为的变化,可以为企业和政府制定相关决策提供参考.     

我国优质蔬菜消费者麻木和敏感行为初探

消费者是整个优质蔬菜产业管理过程的最终目标指向,其在优质蔬菜消费问题上所体现的态度和消费倾向会对政府和企业行为选择产生深刻影响.研究我国优质蔬菜消费者行为,对积极推进我国优质蔬菜产业快速、健康发展具有重要的理论价值和现实意义.本文在国内外研究现状和评价的基础上,另辟蹊径,从优质蔬菜消费者行为的外在表现--消费者麻木和消费者敏感入手,结合相关案例剖析了其效应,透析了影响优质蔬菜消费者行为外在表现的内在原因,并提出了相关对策.     

Consumer surplus and the reform of network industries: a primer

Starting from an industry where production is provided by a public monopolist, we observe the effects of a sequence of reforms within the network industry on consumer surplus. Using a simple comparative statics framework, we find the indifference conditions for the consumer surplus under the following regimes: a public monopoly, an unregulated private monopoly, a regulated private monopoly, a vertically disintegrated monopoly, a duopoly and a liberalized market. The results are determined by the relative size of the x-inefficiencies of the public monopolist, allocative inefficiencies of the private monopoly, the cost of unbundling and the costs related to establishing a competitive market.     

城镇居民不同收入群体消费行为分析

按照家庭收入由低到高将城镇居民划分成四个收入群体,并应用带有家庭属性的AIDS模型分析每个收入群体的消费行为。研究结果表明,随着家庭收入的上升,城镇居民对于大多数商品消费的支出弹性和价格弹性呈下降趋势;城镇居民家庭用品和交通通讯消费富有支出弹性和价格弹性。因此,政府提高低收入群体的收入水平,通过财政政策使家庭用品和交通通讯商品的价格降低,可以有效地刺激城镇居民的消费。     

The subjective well-being of workfare participants: insights from a day reconstruction survey

In this article, we shed more light on the subjective well-being of workfare participants and compare it to the well-being of unemployed and employed workers. We use data from a self-conducted survey among participants in workfare schemes in Germany. We examine two subdimensions of subjective well-being – life satisfaction and emotional well-being – separately to obtain a more comprehensive view of the subjective well-being of workfare participants. Our results show that the life satisfaction of people in this group is between that of employed and unemployed people. In contrast, their emotional well-being is the highest of these three groups.     

Price Competition and Consumer Externalities in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly with Information Disparities

In this paper, we extend the model of vertical product differentiation to consider information disparities about quality differences and their effects on price competition. If uninformed consumers overestimate vertical differentiation, asymmetric information is a source of market power and informed consumers exert positive externalities on high quality product purchasers and negative externalities on low quality product purchasers. Such a result is consistent with the fact that information undermines brand. If uninformed consumers are skeptical, adverse selection issues arise and market demands may be perfectly inelastic to prices. With elastic demands equilibrium prices may be either distorted downwards or reflect real quality if the share of informed consumers is suffciently high. Therefore, with skeptical consumers firms may want either to signal quality or subsidize information provision.     

电子商务消费者权益保护问题初探

目前,电子商务的发展已经使传统消费者权益保护制度受到严峻的挑战.在尊重电子商务发展规律的前提下,我们必须尽快完善现行立法,综合利用各种措施和手段,并积极参与全球司法合作进程,注意吸收先行国家在这方面的立法之精华,给电子商务消费者营造一个平等、互信、安全、有序的市场环境.     

Consumer confidence as a GDP determinant in New EU Member States: a view from a time-varying perspective

This paper offers a pioneer attempt to unveil the time-varying impact of consumer confidence on GDP growth. The empirical analysis is based on a state space model with time-varying coefficients, which is employed on a dataset from 11 New EU Member States. It is shown that the impact of consumer confidence (reflecting the overall uncertainty level in the country) skyrockets in the 2008 Great Recession, providing evidence that the recent crisis was to some extent psychologically governed. After that, the influence of consumer confidence on GDP mostly stabilizes at earlier levels. The EU accession seems not to play an important role in the observed relationship. The obtained conclusions are quite robust across countries and remain intact upon the inclusion of additional control variables in the model. A possible solution for keeping the psychological determinants of the crisis under control is a prompt, coherent, and clearly communicated crisis management policy, which might help preventing a momentous drop of consumer confidence and overall uncertainty.     

Endogenous recessions: The creative destruction effect of final product novelty

In this paper we build a basic macroeconomic model aimed to grasp some aspects of the inner functioning of macroeconomic fluctuations. We highlight a mechanism through which the appearance of a product innovation results in an eventual reduction of the aggregate economic activity. When a new product appears, demand moves towards this more attractive product. The ‘creative destruction’ effect in this context is represented by the resources lost when firms producing old varieties exit the market due to the shortage of demand. Because firms producing a given product receive on average the same amount of demand, exits happen to be highly synchronized. We use this fact to explain the fluctuation asymmetries observed in real data. We test the ability of the model to meet features of real data against the United States' GDP in the 1950–1992 period.