Different family types may have a fixed flow of consumption costs related to subsistence needs. We use a survey approach in order to identify and estimate such a fixed component of spending for different families. Our method involves making direct questions about the linkup between aggregate...

Using Consumer Expenditure Survey data, we obtain summary measures of the distributions of income and consumption for each quarter between 1980 and 1994. We find that the trends in the distribution of income and consumption and the response of these trends to changes in inflation and...

This article is a "sequel" to my first law review article on runaway productions called "Through the Looking Glass": Runaway Productions and "Hollywood Economics," published in The University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law in August 2007. Since 2007, there has been a race to...

In standard trade theory, consumption is normally assumed to be homothetic. Consequently, income and its distribution have no role in determining international trade patterns. This paper examines the assumption and its implications. The assumption of homothetic preferences is rejected at...

Rich people, women, and healthy people live longer. We document that this heterogeneity in life expectancy is large. We use an estimated structural model to assess the impact of life expectancy variation on the elderly's savings. We find that the differences in life expectancy related to...

This paper presents our findings on the structural relationship between household income and consumption expenditure in the township of Kohima. It is based on the primary data collected from 209 households inhabiting 19 wards of the township. It is found that about 56 percent of households are...

This paper presents a panel of data about material culture in early modern Venice. The data are taken from three samples of Venetian probate inventories drawn up voluntarily from Venetian widows in the years 1510-1615, at intervals of roughly fifty years. The entire period has been divided into...

The increasing availability of rich (panel) data provides many opportunities to test theories on consumption smoothing behaviour. At the same time, the informational requirements in terms of data and modelling are high and very context specific, thus requiring a filtering of essential...

Was the increase in income inequality in the US due to permanent shocks or merely to an increase in the variance of transitory shocks? The implications for consumption and welfare depend crucially on the answer to this question. We use CEX repeated cross-section data on consumption and income to...

This paper looks at how the macro shock from the 2008 financial crisis has translated into income and welfare shocks in the form of reduced earnings and consumption at the household level in Turkey. Using a specialized household level Welfare Monitoring Survey implemented in May-June 2009 in 7...