preference theory. It measures willingness-to- pay for others’ consumption and willingness-to-pay for equality in consumption by … evaluating consumption externalities in monetary terms. We introduce an al- truism parameter and an inequality aversion parameter …

Priceless consumption (PC) is a type of consumption that is not available in the marketplace and, therefore, is absent … from aggregate consumption measures. We propose an estimation methodology to recover PC from its effects on the composition … of observable consumption. The estimation shows that PC is economically significant: It is highly volatile and has become …

Consumption growth is predictable, a basic violation of the permanent-income hypothesis. This paper examines three … possible explanations: rule-of-thumb behavior, in which households allow consumption to track per-period income flows rather … than permanent income; habit persistence; and non-separability in preferences over consumption and leisure. The data appear …