Modern macroeconomics empirically addresses economy-wide incentives behind economic actions by using insights from the way a single representative household would behave. This analytical approach requires that incentives of the poor and the rich are strictly aligned. In empirical analysis a...

Most simulated micro-founded macro models use solely consumer-demand aggregates in order to estimate deep economy-wide preference parameters, which are useful for policy evaluation. The underlying demand-aggregation properties that this approach requires, should be easy to empirically disprove:...

In this paper we demonstrate that interpersonal comparisons do not only influence people's level of utility but also lead to "keeping up with the Joneses"-behavior as reference consumption substantially affects households' consumption-savings decisions. By applying the insights from the...

This paper adopts the asymmetric error correction technique to investigate the dynamics of household consumption in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. The asymmetric co-integration testing shows that households in all CEE countries but Bulgaria respond asymmetrically to negative and...

In this paper we perform an empirical analysis on the relationship between private consumption and underground economy for the Italian case. We find that private market consumption and underground (or hidden) consumption may be defined as ”complementary goods”: an increase in underground...

It is shown how one can effectively use cross-section data in modelling the change over time in aggregate consumption expenditure of a heterogeneous population. The starting point of our aggregation analysis is a dynamic behavioral relation on the household level. Based on certain hypotheses on...

In this paper, we examine the effect of observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the desire to die with positive net worth. Using a structural life-cycle model nested in a switching regression with unknown sample separation, we find that roughly three-fourths of the elderly single population has...

Consider the following two opinions, both of which can be found in the literature of consumer demand systems: (a) As the real income of a consumer becomes indefinitely large, re-mixing the consumption bundle becomes irrelevant: having chosen the ultimately satisfying budget shares at any given...

We offer a model for the distribution of consumption over categories of expenditure. We developed this model for consumer demand against the background of analysing price-based substitution between imported and domestically produced products.

The present research, which covers the latest residential boom and bust cycle, highlights that there are no uniform or constant time invariant wealth, housing, and income relations. Even more important, wealth composition is shown to be a significant determinant of consumption. The marginal...