The main research question of this paper is whether or not the risk of family disruption has an impact on the consumption/saving decisions of households. Although little empirical work exists in this area, often presenting indirect evidence, the theory is divided over the effect of family risk...

Our paper empirically considers two general hypotheses related to the literature of behavioral economics. First, we test the null hypothesis that individuals behave, on average, in a manner more consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis than with the idea of self-control in the face...

Our paper empirically considers two general hypotheses related to the literature of behavioral economics. First, we test the null hypothesis that individuals behave, on average, in a manner more consistent with the rational expectations hypothesis than with the idea of self-control in the face...

An evolutionary model of the product life cycle is applied to derive the experience curve and the market size of (expensive) durable goods. The experience (learning) curve suggests that the real costs per unit decrease with an increasing cumulative output (Henderson's law). Based on the idea...

Presented is an evolutionary model of consumer non-durable markets, which is an extension of a previously published paper on consumer durables. The model suggests that the repurchase process is governed by preferential growth. Applying statistical methods it can be shown that in a competitive...

In presence of inequality a status driven utility function reconciles the conflict between income based and nutrition based measures of poverty. Moreover, it can explain why the poor tend to save less, an established empirical fact in the developing countries. The result is independent of the...

This paper discusses the links between earnings, consumption and economic welfare inequality. It places emphasis on the role of leisure and labor supply in the assessment of cross-household inequality and argues that the documented increase of such inequality has its origin in the labor market....

The utility function with traditional exponential discount cannot explain individuals´ problems of inter-temporal inconsistence and self-control. Several economists have explained these problems with what is known as “present-bias”. The present-bias means that a good becomes more tempting...

This is a short survey on consumption theory. Consumption is important to both fluctuation and growth. In addition, consumption introduces some important issues involving financial markets and portfolio decisions. We will describe consumption decisions in a dynamic context. Uncertainty about...

The main advancement of the developed theoretical framework for Country-of-Origin (CO) research in this paper is the holistic consideration of CO in consumer choice that is missing in older works as for example made by ITTERSUM (2003) or JAFFE AND NEBENZAHL (2001). These and other researchers...