The paper lists salient characteristics of the certainty theory of consumer choice and discusses the import of prominent empirical analyses of the theory. All of them reject the theory's empirical relevance which suggests that the theory is unfit to analyze consumer choice in an uncertain world....

This paper investigates the expenditure patterns of South African households using detailed cross-sectional expenditure and price data. Linear expenditure system (LES) parameter estimates are used to calculate income and price elasticities for a number of product categories at different points...

This paper investigates empirically the consumer demand of environmentally relevant goods for Germany, as well as their relationship to the demand for leisure. Higher prices for energy goods like gas, electricity or fuel oil due to higher indirect taxation amongst others may have serious welfare...

This paper investigates empirically the consumer demand of environmentally relevant goods for Germany, as well as their relationship to the demand for leisure. Higher prices for energy goods like gas, electricity or fuel oil due to higher indirect taxation amongst others may have serious welfare...

The rates of value added tax (VAT) have recently changed in the Czech Republic, and I simulate the impact of these reforms. They are an example of changes in indirect taxes that change the prices of goods and services, to which households can respond by adjusting their expenditures. I first...

Widowhood and retirement are likely to change the economic environment of elderly households. While retirement primarily changes income and expenditure patterns, widowhood fundamentally changes the structure of the household. Beside high non-monetary cost of losing the partner, resources are no...

We examine linkages between aggregate household income, distribution of that income, and aggregate cross-country expenditure patterns. We are able to decompose income effects into international income dispersion effects (from variations in average income) and national income dispersion (income...

Whether couples pool their resources and behave like a unit or spend their income individually is crucial for social and tax policy. In this paper, I provide a test of the income pooling hypothesis using administrative cross-sectional survey data on expenditures and individual incomes of couple...

Equivalence scales are routinely applied to adjust the income of households of different size and composition. Because of their practical importance for the measurement of inequality and poverty, a large number of methods for the estimation of equivalence scales have been proposed. Until now, no...

Whether couples pool their resources and behave like a unit or spend their income individually is crucial for social and tax policy. In this paper, I provide a test of the income pooling hypothesis using administrative cross-sectional survey data on expenditures and individual incomes of couple...