A common theme in the theory of demand aggregation is that market demand can acquire properties which are not always individually present among the agents who make up that market, a phenomenon we call heterosis in this paper. This paper focusses on the well known result that with a suitable distribution of demand behavior (arising perhaps from the underlying distribution of preferences), market demand can become approximately a linear function of income or even taken an approximate Cobb-Douglas properties. We highlight the mathematical arguments underpinning these models and show that in the right context, it is possible to carry the arguments further and achieve exact rather than just approximate results: exact Cobb-Douglas market demand or exact linearity of market demand with respect to income.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford in its series Economics Papers with number
2002-W18.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: