This paper presents a nonparametric method for calculating a lower bound on the virtual or reservation price of a new good. This allows the welfare effects of product market innovations to be investigated. We illustrate the technique using consumer panel data.

Characteristics models have been found to be useful in many areas of economics. However, their empirical implementation tends to rely heavily on functional form assumptions. In this paper we develop a revealed preference-based nonparametric approach to characteristics models. We derive the...

This paper uses revealed preference restrictions and nonparametric statistical methods to bound true cost-of-living indices. These are compared to the popular price indices including the type used to calculated the UK RPI. This is used to assess the method of calculating the RPI for substitution...