Durable Goods: An Explanation for Their Slow Adjustment

Equilibrium in a durable goods market with lumpy adjustment

Durable goods are an important component of the business cycle. Equilibrium models of durable goods markets are made difficult by the lumpy nature of individual purchases. We show that a straight forward approximation of the distribution of durable goods holdings gives rise to a tractable equilibrium model. We analyze the case of competition as well as that of a monopoly producer. J.E.L. Classi...

Consumption-Based Asset Pricing: Durable Goods, Adjustment Costs, and Aggregation

In this paper, we investigate the implications of non-separable preferences over durable and nondurable consumption for asset pricing tests when adjusting durable consumption is costly. In an economy without adjustment costs, in which a frictionless rental market exists for the durable good, the standard Euler equation with respect to nondurable consumption will hold for each individual agent a...

Production Capacity for Durable Goods

Durable Goods and Conformity

Is the variety of products supplied in markets a reflection of the diversity of consumers’ preferences? In this paper, we argue that the distribution of durable goods offered in markets tends to be compressed relative to the distribution of consumers’ underlying preferences. In particular, there are strong incentives for conformity in markets for durable goods. The reason for conformity is natu...

Perishable Durable Goods

We examine whether the Coase conjecture [7, 14, 4, 10] is robust against slight ability of commitment of the monopolist not to sell the durable goods to consumers. We quantify the commitment ability in terms of the speed that the durable goods perish, while keeping the time between the o ers small. We demonstrate that the slight commitment capability makes a substantial di erence by constructin...