We adopt the collective approach to consumer behavior with egoistic agents, and assume that the household consumption is either private or public. We then show that (i) household demands have to satisfy testable constraints and (ii) some elements of the decision process can be retrieved from...

This paper extends standard consumer theory to account for endogenous moral motivation. Building on cognitive dissonance theory, I show how moral values are affected by changes in prices and income. The key insight is that changes in prices and income that lead to higher consumption of an...

We consider the problem of optimal consumption for an investor who is risk and uncertainty avers. We model these preferences of the investor with the help of a convex risk-measure. Apart from consumption the agent has the possibility to invest initial capital and random endowment in a market...

Non-positivity of the generalized substitution effect, non-positivity of the own-price substitution effect, homogeneity of degree zero in all prices and income, and the law of demand are some of the most primitive comparative static results in the standard revealed preference theory of...

In the present paper an analysis of the neo-classical optimization model with linear constraints is proposed. By introducing the dual problem it is shown that the solution to the maximization problem is also a solution to the minimization problem. The purely theoretical model proposes a...

The aim of this paper is to explore several features concerning the generalized marginal rate of substitution (GMRS)when the consumers utility maximization problem with several constraints is formulated as a quasi-concave programming problem. We show that a point satisfying the first order...

Much analysis in macroeconomics empirically addresses economy-wide incentives behind consumer/investment choices by using insights from the way a single representative household would behave. Heterogeneity at the micro level can jeopardize attempts to back up the representative consumer...

The availability of quantity information along with expenditure information in some household surveys allows the estimation of price reactions on the basis of unit values. We compare two specifications that have been proposed in this context by Deaton (1990) and Crawford et al. (1997) in order...

Risk may induce precautionary saving but it can also reduce saving. The theoretical literature recognizes both possibilities, but favors a positive effect (both for developed and developing countries); the empirical literature is divided, reporting (small) positive effects for developed...