Representative consumers can be very Pareto inconsistent. We describe a community, with equal income distribution, where all consumers require 50% higher aggregate income than the representative consumer requires in order to be compensated for the doubling of a price. Such large inconsistencies...

If a smooth consumer demand function violates the strong axiom of revealed preference, then income and prices can follow a cycle and return to their starting values even though real income has always risen. We show how real income growth along the "worst" revealed preference cycle depends on the...

This paper introduces an economically interpretable hypothesis that implies that mean excess demand satisfies the weak axiom and that competitive equilibrium is unique. The hypothesis requires, roughly, that the consumers' excess demand vectors spread apart on average as their wealth increases....

Single consumer models are often used to focus attention on economic efficiency, leaving aside equity considerations. In general, these ¡°representative consumer" models do not accurately portray the effects of changes in policies, endowments or technology in the multi-consumer economies they...

We formulate several laws of individual and market demand and describe their relationship to neoclassical demand theory. The laws have implications for comparative statics and stability of competitive equilibrium. We survey results that offer interpretable sufficient conditions for the laws to...

In a generic competitive economy with constant returns production and "increasing dispersion," market demand satisfies the weak axiom of revealed preference and equilibrium is unique. Increasing dispersion requires, roughly, that when the households' incomes rise slightly their demand vectors...