Consumption is the largest component of GDP. Since the 1950s, the life cycle and the permanent income models have … constituted the main analytical tools to the study of consumption behaviour, both at the micro and at the aggregate level. Since … the literature to estimate preferences is the lack of a ‘consumption function’. A challenge for future research is to use …

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 …