We use a unique dataset that combines the responses from an original survey of households, information about the structural characteristics of their homes, utility-provided longitudinal electricity usage records, plus utility program participation information, to study the uptake of energy efficiency incentives and their effect on residential electricity consumption. Attention is restricted to ...

This paper examines the relationship between two types of preference: preference of intertemporal choices and preference towards risk. In the simplest form of the constant relative risk aversion utility function, the intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) and risk aversion has an inverse relationship. However, there is no empirical evidence that suggests this inverse relationship holds....

Commonly used consumption/saving models have radically different implications for households response to income shocks, ranging from the hands-to-mouth model, where consumption bears all the adjustment, to the complete markets model, where wealth bears all the adjustment. In this paper we use the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth, which is the only available micro dataset that conta...

This paper is concerned about the allocation of households’ consumption expenditure over time in a life cycle environment. We construct a pseudo panel from a time series of cross sections using average cohort procedures. The parameters of a CRRA utility function with socio-demographic dependent marginal utility is then estimated by GMM using an Euler approach. Stochastic dynamic programming tec...

The emergence of wireless telephone and broadband technologies has drastically altered the traditional household choice set for satisfying their communications needs. In this paper we explore this evolution. To do so, we extend the traditional (node-to-node) demand structure by permitting households to derive utility from communication with others while either the initiator or the recipient of ...

An equivalence scale is a measure of the cost of living of a household of a given size and demographic composition, relative to the cost of living of a reference household (usually a single adult), when both households attain the same level of utility or standard of living. Equivalence scales are dif cult to construct because household utility cannot be directly measured, which results in econo...

Brand choice models estimated on scanner panel data typically show that a household’s brand choice process is characterized by state dependence, i.e. a household’s brand choices are serially correlated over time. Two approaches have been employed by marketing researchers to estimate state dependence effects using brand choice data. The first approach is based on probability models—such as Marko...

Consumers are often observed to purchase more than one variety of a product on a given shopping trip. The simultaneous demand for varieties is observed not only for packaged goods such as yogurt or soft drinks, but in many other product categories such as movies, music compact disks, and apparel. Multinomial (MN) choice models cannot be applied to data exhibiting the simultaneous choice of more...

The present paper aims to determine the relationship between ICT usage and generation gap in Tehran urban family. This research is based on a survey in which a systematic random sampling of 384 families has been chosen to be questioned from different districts of Tehran. The results of the test showed a meaningful relationship between the usage of ICT and generation gap in urban households of T...