Microfounded macromodels (SDGE models) represent the dominant approach in academic macroeconomics, and their influence now extends to the forecasting models of central banks.  These models appear to adopt a clear methodological approach, which promotes internal consistency above external...

Social norms are patterns of behavior that are self-enforcing at the group level: everyone wants to conform when they expect everyone else to conform.  There are multiple mechanisms that sustain social norms, including a desire to coordinate, fear of being sanctioned, signaling membership in...

Using a South African data set, the paper poses six questions about the determinants of subjective well-being. Much of the paper is concerned with the role of relative concepts. We find that comparator income – measured as average income of others in the local residential cluster - enters the...

This paper proposes a joint model of tobacco consumption and mortality over the life-cycle. The decision to smoke is a trade off between current utility derived from smoking and a mortality risk increasing with age. Individuals with a longer potential life expectancy have more incentive to cut...

Consider a finite data set where each observation consists of a bunde of contingent consumption chosen by an agent from a constraint set of such bundles.  We develop a general procedure for testing the consistency of this data set with a broad class of models of choice under risk and under...

These are additional notes relating to the paper `The Comparative Statics of Constrained Optimization Problems`, which is appearing in Econometrica. It gathers together material present in various earlier versions of the paper, as well as some new material, which are not found in the published...

This paper gives a non-fixed point theoretic proof of equilibrium existence when the excess demand function of an exchange economy obeys the weak axiom. The proof is simple and geometrically intuitive, and it also permits a weakening of the continuity assumption on the excess demand function....

This paper develops a revealed preference methodology for exploring whether time inconsistencies in household choice are the product of nonstationarities at the individual level or the result of individual heterogeneity and renegotiation within the collective unit.  An empirical application to...

We identify necessary and sufficient conditions under which a finite data set of price vectors and consumption bundles can be rationalized by a weakly separable utility function.  Our result could be understood as a generalization of Afriat's Theorem.

This paper discusses the incentive to bundle when consumer valuations are non-additive and/or when products are supplied by separate sellers.  Whether integrated or separate, a firm has an incentive to introduce a bundle discount when demand for the bundle is more elastic than the overall...