A characteristic feature of economic development is the ever changing structure of consumption patterns. Reducing the explanation of this phenomenon to changing prices, finally caused by changes in the availability of goods (or characteristics), would neglect a major force driving this change,...

We analyze the strategic behavior of firms when demand is determined by a rule of thumb behavior of consumers. We assume consumer dynamics where individual consumers follow simple behavioral decision rules governed by imitation and habit as suggested in consumer research. On this basis, we...

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...

Social demand functions result from the budget constrained maximization of "social preferences" or "other regarding preferences." These preferences are non-selfish in the sense that they also depend on other consumers' wealth. This paper addresses the robustness to wealth externalities of the...

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...

Using an endogenous growth model where the discount rate is a function of consumption, we show that the condition in which the elasticity of the marginal utility of consumption is greater than one ensures, at the same time, the existence of an unique saddle point equilibrium and the maximization...

In our model, individual consumers follow simple behavioral decision rules based on imitation and habit as suggested in consumer research, social learning, and related fields. Demand can be viewed as the outcome of a population game whose revision protocol is determined by the consumers'...

We discuss a simple model of choices of joint consumption by a working couple who place maintenance of their marriage (relationship) above all else. Any proposal made by one partner seeking to provide maximal utility to the other so as to preserve the marriage, in the case where preferences of...

This article examines the meaning of consumers' sovereignty in the interwar thought of the economist William Harold Hutt. For Hutt, consumers' sovereignty was an ideal, a norm against which economists could assess different economic systems. It connected the value of individual freedom, the...

We discuss a simple model of choices of joint consumption by a working couple who place maintenance of their marriage (relationship) above all else. Any proposal made by one partner seeking to provide maximal utility to the other so as to preserve the marriage, in the case where preferences of...