The paper provides a new model of consumption behavior under uncertainty as the solution to a continuous-time dynamic control problem in which an individual moves between employment and unemployment according to a Markov process. Behavior at low asset levels and at break-even points is analyzed....

Representative consumers can be very Pareto inconsistent. We describe a community, with equal income distribution, where all consumers require 50% higher aggregate income than the representative consumer requires in order to be compensated for the doubling of a price. Such large inconsistencies...