The outcome of the economic performance of individuals is utilised in the form of consumption and consequent welfare. Despite this truism, there is relatively little information available on household consumption behaviour in Hungary stemming from investigations based on economic theory. The...

Strong growth in disposable income has inflated consumption to unprecedented, but not sustainable levels. In this process consumer behavior has been changing. To explain the driving forces of this development, the paper introduces a theory of evolving consumer preferences that is molded in an...

We propose a novel approach to modelling time preferences, based on a cognitive shortcoming of human decision makers: the perception of future events becomes increasingly ?blurred? as the events are pushed further in time. We axiomatise a class of preference representations which can be...

Previous studies suggest that two otherwise robust 'anomalies' - preference reversals and disparities between buying and selling valuations - are eroded when respondents participate in repeated markets. We report an experiment which investigates whether this is true when factors neglected in...

Strong growth in disposable income has driven, and is still driving, consumption to unprecedented, but not sustainable levels. To explain the dynamic interplay of needs, need satisfaction, and innovation underlying that growth a behavioral theory of consumption is suggested and discussed with...

Our concern is with economizing behavior when preferences depend on experience. It is shown that such dependence, reflecting 'deep psychological structure', even when it is stable or habit forming in a fixed environment, can be destabilizing in a market context when prices are adjusting, even...

Does it make us unhappier when we compare our current consumption with that of the Joneses or our own past achievements? This paper tries an answer without recurring on interpersonal utility comparisons. It calibrates an economy under three different assumptions, non-comparing utility, and...

This paper explores whether habit formation in the representative agent’s preferences can explain two failures of the standard permanent income model with intertemporally separable utility: the sensitivity of consumption to lagged consumer sentiment and to predictable changes in current income...

This paper quantifies the welfare cost of consumption externalities in an endogenous growth model with habit formation. Agent's utility depends on both current consumption and a reference consumption level determined by economy-wide average past consumption. Although utility may be lower in the...

We study the choice of drug for the treatment of high blood pressure (hypertension) in Sweden between 1988-1994. During this time period calcium antagonists and ACE-inhibitors increased their market shares at the expense of the older drugs diuretics and beta-blockers. We use a prescription micro...