Home » Consumer » Consumer Behavior

Measuring Consumer Behavior: Semiparametric Estimation and ...

Source: www.econ.jhu.edu
Topic: Consumer Behavior

Sort Desciption: metric models of consumer behavior. Second to provide tight bounds on welfare ..... of income effects on consumer behaviour across a wide range of the ...

Content Inside: Measuring Consumer Behavior: Semiparametric Estimation and Revealed Preference Richard Blundell University College London and Institute for Fiscal Studies Ely Lectures John Hopkins University October 2003 Draft for the Overview Lecture on 7th March Abstract There are three key objectives of these lectures: First to provide a powerful test of integrability conditions on individual household data without the need for para- metric models of consumer behavior. Second to provide tight bounds on welfare costs of relative price and tax changes. Third to provide tight bounds on demand responses. The aim is to allow price response parameters to vary across points in the income distribution. The idea is to fully exploit micro data on consumer expen- ditures and incomes across a finite set of discrete relative price or tax regimes. This is achieved by combining the theory of revealed preference with the seimparamet- ric estimation of consumer expansion paths (Engel curves). Recent developments on semiparametric estimation of shape invariant models with endogenous regres- sors are exploited. Empirical examples are given from the analysis of cost of living indeces and from tax policy reform. These lectures draw on joint research with James Banks Martin Browning Xioahong Chen Ian Crawford Alan Duncan Arthur Lewbel and Krishna Pendakur. I am grateful to them for comments and inspiration. This study is part of the program of research of the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at IFS. The financial support of the ESRC is gratefully acknowledged. Material from the FES made available by the ONS through the ESRC Data Archive has been used by permission of the controller of HMSO. Neither the ONS nor the ESRC Data Archive bear responsibility for the analysis or the interpretation of the data reported here. The usual disclaimer applies. Department of Economics University College Lonodn Gower Street London WC1E 6BT and Institute for Fiscal Studi ...