Meaghan Duetsch The United States has experienced many changes over the past two decades in the way health care is managed, such as the shift from primarily fee-for-service type health insurance coverage to coverage through health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and preferred provider organizations (PPOs). Health care expenditures, as a proportion of all expenditures, have increased over the l...

Research suggests that widows and widowers experience substantial economic vulnerability. Using nationally representative data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys 1980-2000, we describe pre-wldowhood shifts in medical and funeral/buria! expenditures and discuss how these changes may affect post-widowhood economic well-being. Our analyses suggest that funeral/burial and medical expenditures, w...

We reformulate neoclassical consumer choice by focusing on λ, the marginal utility of money. As the opportunity cost of current expenditure, λ is approximated by the slope of the indirect utility function of the continuation. We argue that λ can largely supplant the role of an arbitrary budget constraint in partial equilibrium analysis. The result is a better grounded, more flexible and more in...

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about economic inequality in India during the post-reform period. We analyze consumption inequality through the hitherto neglected lens of nonfood expenditure. Using household level consumption expenditure data from the quinquennial “thick” rounds of the NSS, we show that inequality within food and non-food groups has declined, even as overall expend...

Some household expenditures, such as those for subsistence or basic needs, are fixed. Using the methodology of equivalence scales, we develop a model in which differences in fixed costs of characteristics across households can be identified from household behaviour. Equivalent expenditure for a household is the expenditure needed to bring a reference household, such as a single childless adult,...

STUDY OBJECTIVE This study aimed to estimate the health and social costs of tobacco use in Ontario, Canada. DESIGN This was a cost-benefit analysis based on cross sectional data in 1988, stratified by age and sex, using an attributable risk model. The total cost of the consequences of tobacco use in the society included those costs attributed to extra deaths, disability, hospitalisation, phys...

Abstract This study reviews the direct and indirect effects of higher energy and bread prices (due to removing their subsidies and paying their equivalent in cash instead). Therefore, all consumer goods were classified into 6 groups and a linear expenditure system was estimated based on households’ budget data of 2009 and 2011 for urban and rural areas separately. The results indicate that hi...

Price indices are constructed to represent a population by using a sample of household expenditure information as weights. This expenditure information must be aggregated across households. In most cases, including the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI), the aggregation method used corresponds to a plutocratic index. Other types of aggregation, such as the democratic index, are also possible, and,...