Individual Heterogeneity and Average Welfare

Individual heterogeneity is an important source of variation in demand. Allowing for general heterogeneity is needed for correct welfare comparisons. We consider general heterogeneous demand where preferences and linear budget sets are statistically independent. Only the marginal distribution of dem...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hausman, Jerry A (Contributor), Newey, Whitney K (Contributor)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: The Econometric Society, 2018-03-20T19:47:04Z.
Subjects:
Online Access:Get fulltext
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100 1 0 |a Hausman, Jerry A  |e author 
100 1 0 |a Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics  |e contributor 
100 1 0 |a Hausman, Jerry A  |e contributor 
100 1 0 |a Newey, Whitney K  |e contributor 
700 1 0 |a Newey, Whitney K  |e author 
245 0 0 |a Individual Heterogeneity and Average Welfare 
260 |b The Econometric Society,   |c 2018-03-20T19:47:04Z. 
856 |z Get fulltext  |u http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/114243 
520 |a Individual heterogeneity is an important source of variation in demand. Allowing for general heterogeneity is needed for correct welfare comparisons. We consider general heterogeneous demand where preferences and linear budget sets are statistically independent. Only the marginal distribution of demand for each price and income is identified from cross-section data where only one price and income is observed for each individual. Thus, objects that depend on varying price and/or income for an individual are not generally identified, including average exact consumer surplus. We use bounds on income effects to derive relatively simple bounds on the average surplus, including for discrete/continuous choice. We also sketch an approach to bounding surplus that does not use income effect bounds. We apply the results to gasoline demand. We find tight bounds for average surplus in this application, but wider bounds for average deadweight loss. 
655 7 |a Article 
773 |t Econometrica