In response to climate change, many electric utilities introduce pricing schemes to induce their customers to consume less electricity. When a significant portion of the consumer population finds it more costly to economize electricity, one would expect utilities to offer incentives in return...

This paper presents an analysis of self-employment matching among dual-earner couples in Sweden. The results show that self-employment propensities are positively correlated across partners. Self-employment propensities are significantly higher for both males and females whose spouses are...

This paper is motivated by a very practical question: are there significant geographical differences in the accessibility to the credit market on the part of Italian households? The investigation is carried using robust probit model. Estimation is carried out in a Bayesian framework. The results...

Hicks (1956) conjectured that Slutsky symmetry should hold for discrete as well as infinitesimal price changes if demand functions are globally linear. This paper proves this conjecture using the LES utility function and the Slutsky compensation for price changes. More importantly, in sharp...

This paper uses a unique survey questionnaire to assess the impact of the 2002 French tax cut on consumption. I find that the proportion of "spender" consumers as opposed to "Ricardian" consumers is relatively high, with 52.7 per cent of the households declaring that they consume their tax cuts....

This paper examines a model with habit formation in consumption. The model leads to higher equilibrium values in consumption, output, capital accumulation and labor supply than the neoclassical growth model with elastic labor supply. Comparative static analysis shows that an increase in the...

This paper investigates the impact of habits on savings and steady state capital intensity. Within the framework of an OLG economy with productive capital, a rise in the strength of habits increases savings if the steady state is asymptotically stable. Consequently, the steady state capital...

This paper explores the theoretical linkage between habit and the environment through environmentally harmful consumption affected by habitual behavior. It is shown that habit formation of consumption has both negative and positive effects on environmental quality. Whether the positive effect...

This paper models interdependences between spouses. To that end, it estimates income satisfaction in a collective family model framework using a sample of seven EU countries. The IV Hausman-Taylor estimator has been selected in the majority of countries, and it appears that those of Southern...

Within a semiparametric framework we propose a test of shape invariance of Engel curves, which is a necessary condition for base independence. Using Canadian family expenditure data for 1996 we reject shape invariance for the fuel and clothing share equations.