We use a money pump argument to measure deviations from the revealed preference axioms. Using a panel data set of food expenditures, we find a large number of violations of the weak axiom of revealed preference. The money pump costs are small, which indicate that the violations of revealed preference are not severe. While most households’ behavior deviates from rationality, by our measure they ...

In this paper we estimate quadratic food Engel curves with measurement error using the 1994 Ethiopian Urban Household Budget Survey. In sharp contrast to the findings from developed countries, food share is found to increase with expenditure, and only starts to decline after some threshold level of expenditure. We establish the robustness of this inverted-U relationship by estimating a more fle...

Most risk-sharing tests on developing country data are conducted at the level of the village; generally, the full risk-sharing hypothesis is rejected. This paper uses detailed data on all insurance networks within a village in Tanzania; networks are not clustered but largely overlapping. We test whether full risk-sharing occurs within these networks. While village level full-insurance cannot be...

This paper attempts to detect the existence of links in consumption preferences between generations. Preferences for consumption goods may be determined by the preferences of parents (vertical transmission) and/or by preferences arising from the environment (horizontal transmission). We propose an indirect methodology to overcome the lack of data on consumption choices of dynasties, i.e., paren...

I estimate an extended version of the incomplete markets consumption model allowing for heterogeneity in discount factors, nonseparable preferences for food and other nondurables, liquidity constraints, and precautionary savings. I find statistical support for this model, especially for the non-separability of preferences for food and other nondurables. JEL D12, D91, E21

The association between types of food access and rising adult obesity rates is increasingly recognized, as a complement to the effects of declining physical activity. Previous studies have examined the effects on obesity of only a limited set of store types, such as grocery stores, fast food restaurants and big-box retailers, and they have ignored that certain behavioral factors, such as could ...

The ‘rational addiction’ model of cigarette smoking downplays the influence of social factors and biological dependency. This paper develops a simple model of these factors and presents some causality tests that indicate that nicotine content ‘causes’ smoking with the direction being negative. ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D12; J12

Anthropologists have documented substantial and persistent differences in food preferences across social groups. My paper asks whether such food cultures can constrain caloric intake? I first document that inter-state migrants within India consume fewer calories per Rupee of food expenditure compared to their neighbors. Second, I show that migrants bring their origin-state food preferences with...

We exploit scanner data to track payment choice for grocery purchases for a large panel of households over three years. We show that households focus most of their expenditures on one or at most two of these instruments in choosing between using cash, a check, or a card, and they very rarely switch. We focus particularly on the role of expenditure size in determining payment choice. While the u...

Conflict, Food Price Shocks, and Food Insecurity: The Experience of Afghan Households Using nationally-representative household survey data and confidential geo-coded data on violence, we examine the linkages between conflict, food insecurity, and food price shocks in Afghanistan. Spatial mappings of the raw data reveal large variations in levels of food insecurity and conflict across the count...