Noncooperative Household Consumption with Caring

We present a household consumption model that accounts for caring house- hold members, while allowing for noncooperative behavior in decisions on pub- lic goods. The intrahousehold consumption outcome critically depends on the degree of caring between the household members. By varying the degree of in- trahousehold caring, the model encompasses a whole continuum of household consumption models that are situated between the fully cooperative model and the noncooperative model without caring. This feature is used to define a measure for the degree of cooperation within the household. We also establish a dual characterization of our noncooperative model with caring preferences: we show that the model is dually equivalent to a noncooperative model with non-caring preferences that is characterized by intrahousehold transfers. Fi- nally, following a revealed preference approach, we derive testable implications of the model for empirical data. We demonstrate the practical usefulness of the model through an illustrative application.household consumption;caring preferences;intrahousehold coop- eration;Nash equilibrium;revealed preferences

Is Utility Transferable? A Revealed Preference Analysis

We provide a revealed preference analysis of the transferable utility hypothesis, which is widely used in economic models. First, we establish revealed preference conditions that must be satisfied for observed group behavior to be consistent with Pareto efficiency under transferable utility. Next, we show that these conditions are easily testable by means of integer programming methods. The tests are entirely nonparametric, which makes them robust with respect to specification errors. Finally, we demonstrate the practical usefulness of our conditions by means of an application to Spanish consumption data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical test of the transferable utility hypothesis.transferable utility hypothesis;generalized quasi-linearity;nonparamet- ric tests;revealed preferences

Degrees of Cooperation in Household Consumption Models: A Revealed Preference Analysis

We develop a revealed preference approach to analyze non-unitary con- sumption models with intrahousehold allocations deviating from the cooper- ative (or Pareto e¢ cient) solution. At a theoretical level, we establish re- vealed preference conditions of household consumption models with varying degrees of cooperation. Using these conditions, we show independence (or non-nestedness) of the di¤erent (cooperative-noncooperative) models. At a practical level, we show that our characterization implies testable conditions for a whole spectrum of cooperative-noncooperative models that can be verified by means of mixed integer programming (MIP) methods. This MIP formula- tion is particularly attractive in view of empirical analysis. An application to data drawn from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) demon- strates the empirical relevance of consumption models that account for limited intrahousehold cooperation.household consumption;intrahousehold cooperation;revealed preferences;Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preference (GARP);mixed in- teger programming (MIP).

La disponibilité des diplômés universitaires sur le marché du travail québécois

Entre 1971 et 1981, il s’est produit une dégradation sensible de la situation du Québec, relativement à celle du Canada, en ce qui touche le nombre des diplômés universitaires au sein de la main-d’oeuvre. Des quatre grandes régions du Canada, c’est le Québec qui accusait le plus lent taux de croissance, tant par le nombre absolu de diplômés que par le nombre relatif de diplômés par millier de personnes dans la population active. Cette diminution relative de l’offre de diplômés universitaires au sein de la main-d’oeuvre québécoise avait deux causes. En premier lieu, les universités québécoises ont octroyé un nombre relativement faible de diplômés par rapport à la population d’âge universitaire. En second lieu, un nombre important de diplômés universitaires ont quitté la province. En effet, pour la période 1975-1981, on estime l’émigration nette des diplômés à quelgue 21 200, soit 19,6 % des diplômes conférés au cours de cette période. Étant donné l’influence qu’exercent les universitaires sur la croissance économique, dans les industries de haute technologie en particulier, il serait souhaitable que le gouvernement du Québec reconsidère les réductions qu’il se propose d’apporter aux budgets des universités

Évolutions récentes du crédit aux ménages en France.

Les turbulences observées sur les marchés financiers n’ont guère affecté jusqu’à présent la distribution de crédits à l’habitat en France, alors que la demande des ménages a continué de se modérer de manière graduelle.crédits à l’habitat, ménages, endettement, conditions du crédit, taux débiteurs.

The homogeneous marginal utility of income assumption

We develop a test to verify if every agent from a population of heterogeneous consumers has the same marginal utility of income function. This homogeneous marginal utility of income assumption is often (implicitly) used in applied demand studies because it has nice aggregation properties and facilitates welfare analysis. If a dataset satisfies our test, we can further identify the common marginal utility of income function. We apply our results using a US cross sectional dataset on food consumption

Noncooperative Household Consumption with Caring

We present a household consumption model that accounts for caring house- hold members, while allowing for noncooperative behavior in decisions on pub- lic goods. The intrahousehold consumption outcome critically depends on the degree of caring between the household members. By varying the degree of in- trahousehold caring, the model encompasses a whole continuum of household consumption models that are situated between the fully cooperative model and the noncooperative model without caring. This feature is used to define a measure for the degree of cooperation within the household. We also establish a dual characterization of our noncooperative model with caring preferences: we show that the model is dually equivalent to a noncooperative model with non-caring preferences that is characterized by intrahousehold transfers. Fi- nally, following a revealed preference approach, we derive testable implications of the model for empirical data. We demonstrate the practical usefulness of the model through an illustrative application.