We merge detailed household level expenditure data from older households with historical local weather information. We then test for a heat or eat trade off: do households cut back on food spending to finance the additional cost of keeping warm during cold shocks? For households who cannot...

Standard economic theory implies that the labelling of cash transfers or cash-equivalents (e.g. child benefits, food stamps) should have no effect on spending patterns. The empirical literature to date does not contradict this proposition. We study the UK Winter Fuel Payment (WFP), a cash...

A well known problem with revealed preference methods is that when data are found to satisfy their restrictions it is hard to know whether this should be viewed as a triumph for economic theory, or a warning that these conditions are so undemanding that almost anything goes. This paper allows...