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...

We investigate necessary and sufficient nonparametric conditions for the quasi-hyperbolic consumer. These turn out to be quite tractable. We investigate the performance of this model compared to the standard exponential discounting model using consumer panel data.

Many in both government and academia are showing renewed interest in developing new measures of national well-being. A new measure that goes “beyond GDP” to comprehensively capture non-market goods could be a useful supplement to traditional economic indicators for guiding policy and more...

Monitoring of the environmental impacts of consumption is necessary for the evaluation of current performance and to support the understanding of how initiatives for change can be implemented. We discuss design issues and methodology for an Environmentally Sensitive Shopper (ESS) index to...

For previously identified weakly separable blockings of goods and assets, we construct aggregates using four superlative index numbers, the Fisher, Sato-Vartia, Törnqvist and Walsh, two non-superlative indexes, the Laspeyres and Paasche and the atheoretical simple summation. We conduct several...

Revealed preference tests are widely used in empirical applications of consumer rationality. These are static tests, and consequently, lack ability to handle measurement errors in the data. This paper extends and generalizes existing procedures that account for measurement errors in revealed...

This paper uses revealed preference inequalities to provide tight nonparametric bounds on consumer responses to price changes. Price responses are allowed to vary nonparametrically across the income distribution by exploiting microdata on consumer expenditures and incomes over a finite set of...

For previously identified weakly separable blockings of goods and assets, we construct aggregates using four superlative index numbers, the Fisher, Sato-Vartia, Törnqvist and Walsh, two non-superlative indexes, the Laspeyres and Paasche and the atheoretical simple summation. We conduct several...

Revealed preference tests are widely used in empirical applications of consumer rationality. These are static tests, and consequently, lack ability to handle measurement errors in the data. This paper extends and generalizes existing procedures that account for measurement errors in revealed...

It is submitted, for the very large number of different traditional type formulae to determine price indices associated with a pair of periods, which are joined with the longstanding question of which one to choose, they should all be abandoned. A method is proposed whereby price levels...