Demand System Specification and Estimation

This book explores the principal issues involved in bridging the gap between the pure theory of consumer behavior and its empirical implementation. The theoretical starting point is the familiar static, one-period, utility maximizing model in which the consumer allocates a fixed budget among competing categories of goods. The authors focus upon four issues of primary importance in empirical demand analysis: the structure of preferences, the treatment of demographic variables, the treatment of dynamics, and the specification of the stochastic structure of the demand system.

Robert A. Pollak is at University of Pennsylvania. Terence J. Wales is at University of British Columbia.