IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/econom/v147y2008i2p275-281.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A nonparametric test of weak separability and consumer preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Fleissig, Adrian R.
  • Whitney, Gerald A.

Abstract

Two stochastic nonparametric procedures are developed to evaluate the significance of violations of weak separability. When the data have measurement error, we show that the necessary and sufficient weak separability conditions of Varian [Varian, H., 1983. Nonparametric tests of consumer behavior. Review of Economic Studies 50, 99-110] must also satisfy the Afriat inequalities. The tests detect weak separability with high probability for weakly separable data. In addition, the procedures correctly reject weak separability for both nonseparable and random utility simulated data sets. The tests also fail to reject weak separability for a monetary and consumption data set which suggests that measurement error may be the source of the observed violations.

Suggested Citation

  • Fleissig, Adrian R. & Whitney, Gerald A., 2008. "A nonparametric test of weak separability and consumer preferences," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 275-281, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:econom:v:147:y:2008:i:2:p:275-281
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-4076(08)00143-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Varian, Hal R, 1982. "The Nonparametric Approach to Demand Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 945-973, July.
    2. Fleissig, Adrian R. & Whitney, Gerald A., 2005. "Testing for the Significance of Violations of Afriat's Inequalities," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 355-362, July.
    3. William A. Barnett & Douglas Fisher & Apostolos Serletis, 2006. "Consumer Theory and the Demand for Money," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Money And The Economy, chapter 1, pages 3-43, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Barnett, William A, 1983. "New Indices of Money Supply and the Flexible Laurent Demand System," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 1(1), pages 7-23, January.
    5. Swofford, James L., 2000. "Microeconomic foundations of an optimal currency area," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 121-128, December.
    6. Leigh Drake, 1997. "Nonparametric Demand Analysis Of U.K. Personal Sector Decisions On Consumption, Leisure, And Monetary Assets: A Reappraisal," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 679-683, November.
    7. Belongia, Michael T & Chalfant, James A, 1989. "The Changing Empirical Definition of Money: Some Estimates from a Model of the Demand for Money Substitutes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(2), pages 387-397, April.
    8. Gallant, A. Ronald, 1981. "On the bias in flexible functional forms and an essentially unbiased form : The fourier flexible form," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 211-245, February.
    9. Gross, John, 1995. "Testing Data for Consistency with Revealed Preference," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(4), pages 701-710, November.
    10. Christensen, Laurits R & Jorgenson, Dale W & Lau, Lawrence J, 1975. "Transcendental Logarithmic Utility Functions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 367-383, June.
    11. Barnett, William A., 1980. "Economic monetary aggregates an application of index number and aggregation theory," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 11-48, September.
    12. Terrell, Dek, 1996. "Incorporating Monotonicity and Concavity Conditions in Flexible Functional Forms," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(2), pages 179-194, March-Apr.
    13. Diewert, W. E. & Parkan, C., 1985. "Tests for the consistency of consumer data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 127-147.
    14. Swofford, James L & Whitney, Gerald A, 1988. "Comparison of Nonparametric Tests of Weak Separability for Annual and Quarterly Data on Consumption, Leisure, and Money," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 6(2), pages 241-246, April.
    15. Drake, Leigh, 1996. "Relative Prices in the UK Personal Sector Money Demand Function," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(438), pages 1209-1226, September.
    16. Barnett, William A, 1982. "The Optimal Level of Monetary Aggregation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 14(4), pages 687-710, November.
    17. Barnett, William A. & Jonas, Andrew B., 1983. "The Muntz-Szatz demand system : An application of a globally well behaved series expansion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 337-342.
    18. Russell Davidson & James MacKinnon, 2000. "Bootstrap tests: how many bootstraps?," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 55-68.
    19. Fisher, Douglas, 1992. "Money-Demand Variability: A Demand-Systems Approach," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 10(2), pages 143-151, April.
    20. Fleissig, Adrian R, 1997. "The Consumer Consumption Conundrum: An Explanation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(2), pages 177-192, May.
    21. Drake, Leigh & Chrystal, K Alec, 1997. "Personal Sector Money Demand in the UK," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 49(2), pages 188-206, April.
    22. Serletis, Apostolos & Shahmoradi, Asghar, 2007. "Flexible Functional Forms, Curvature Conditions, And The Demand For Assets," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(4), pages 455-486, September.
    23. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R, 1980. "Global Properties of Flexible Functional Forms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 422-432, June.
    24. Barnett, William A & Choi, Seungmook, 1989. "A Monte Carlo Study of Tests of Blockwise Weak Separability," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 7(3), pages 363-377, July.
    25. McMillan, Melville L & Amoako-Tuffour, Joe, 1988. "An Examination of Preferences for Local Public Sector Outputs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(1), pages 45-54, February.
    26. Serletis, Apostolos, 1987. "On the Demand for Money in the United States," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 249-255.
    27. Chalfant, James A & Alston, Julian M, 1988. "Accounting for Changes in Tastes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 391-410, April.
    28. Fleissig, Adrian R. & Hall, Alastair R. & Seater, John J., 2000. "Garp, Separability, And The Representative Agent," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(3), pages 324-342, September.
    29. Swofford, James L. & Whitney, Gerald A., 1994. "A revealed preference test for weakly separable utility maximization with incomplete adjustment," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1-2), pages 235-249.
    30. W. E. Diewert, 1973. "Afriat and Revealed Preference Theory," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 40(3), pages 419-425.
    31. de PERETTI, PHILIPPE, 2005. "Testing The Significance Of The Departures From Utility Maximization," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(3), pages 372-397, June.
    32. Jones, Barry E. & Dutkowsky, Donald H. & Elger, Thomas, 2005. "Sweep programs and optimal monetary aggregation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 483-508, February.
    33. Varian, Hal R., 1985. "Non-parametric analysis of optimizing behavior with measurement error," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 445-458.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Quah, 2014. "A test for weakly separable preferences," Economics Series Working Papers 708, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Ian Crawford & Bram De Rock, 2014. "Empirical Revealed Preference," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 503-524, August.
    3. El-Shagi, Makram & Kelly, Logan, 2019. "What can we learn from country-level liquidity in the EMU?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 75-83.
    4. Apostolos Serletis & Libo Xu, "undated". "Consumption, Leisure, and Money," Working Papers 2019-08, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 06 Jul 2019.
    5. Laurens CHERCHYE & Ian CRAWFORD & Bram DE ROCK & Frederic VERMEULEN, 2011. "Aggregation without the aggravation? Nonparametric analysis of the representative consumer," Working Papers of Department of Economics, Leuven ces11.36, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Economics, Leuven.
    6. Smeulders, Bart & Crama, Yves & Spieksma, Frits C.R., 2019. "Revealed preference theory: An algorithmic outlook," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 272(3), pages 803-815.
    7. Hjertstrand, Per & Swofford, James L., 2019. "Revealed preference tests of indirect and homothetic weak separability of financial assets, consumption and leisure," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 108-114.
    8. Sato, Hideyasu, 2020. "Do Large-scale Point-of-sale Data Satisfy the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preference in Aggregation Using Representative Price Indexes?: A Case Involving Processed Food and Beverages," RCESR Discussion Paper Series DP19-2, Research Center for Economic and Social Risks, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    9. Hjertstrand, Per & Jones, Barry E., 2013. "What Do Revealed Preference Axioms Reveal about Elasticities of Demand?," Working Paper Series 972, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    10. Cherchye, Laurens & Demuynck, Thomas & De Rock, Bram & Hjertstrand, Per, 2015. "Revealed preference tests for weak separability: An integer programming approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 186(1), pages 129-141.
    11. Matthew Polisson, 2018. "A Lattice Test for Additive Separability," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201801, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    12. Hjertstrand, Per & Swofford, James L. & Whitney, Gerald A., 2019. "Index Numbers and Revealed Preference Rankings," Working Paper Series 1308, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    13. Laurens Cherchye & Ian Crawford & Bram De Rock & Frederic Vermeulen, 2015. "Revealed Preference and Aggregation," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2015-08, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Barnett, William A. & Serletis, Apostolos, 2008. "Consumer preferences and demand systems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 210-224, December.
    2. Drake, Leigh & Fleissig, Adrian R., 2010. "Substitution between monetary assets and consumer goods: New evidence on the monetary transmission mechanism," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 2811-2821, November.
    3. Binner, Jane M. & Bissoondeeal, Rakesh K. & Elger, C. Thomas & Jones, Barry E. & Mullineux, Andrew W., 2009. "Admissible monetary aggregates for the euro area," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 99-114, February.
    4. Jones, Barry E. & Stracca, Livio, 2006. "Are money and consumption additively separable in the euro area? A non-parametric approach," Working Paper Series 704, European Central Bank.
    5. Serletis, Apostolos & Rangel-Ruiz, Ricardo, 2005. "Microeconometrics and measurement matters: Some results from monetary economics for Canada," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 307-330, June.
    6. Barry E. Jones & Livio Stracca, 2008. "Does Money Matter In The Is Curve? The Case Of The Uk," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 76(s1), pages 58-84, September.
    7. Bergh , Andreas & Nilsson, Therese, 2008. "Do economic liberalization and globalization increase income inequality?," Working Papers 2008:12, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    8. Ali Jadidzadeh & Apostolos Serletis, 2019. "The Demand for Assets and Optimal Monetary Aggregation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(4), pages 929-952, June.
    9. Cherchye, Laurens & Demuynck, Thomas & De Rock, Bram & Hjertstrand, Per, 2015. "Revealed preference tests for weak separability: An integer programming approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 186(1), pages 129-141.
    10. Ian Crawford & Bram De Rock, 2014. "Empirical Revealed Preference," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 503-524, August.
    11. Drake, Leigh & Fleissig, Adrian R., 2008. "A Note On The Policy Implications Of Using Divisia Consumption And Monetary Aggregates," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 132-149, February.
    12. Kesavan, Thulasiram, 1988. "Monte Carlo experiments of market demand theory," ISU General Staff Papers 198801010800009854, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    13. Elger, Thomas & Jones, Barry & Edgerton, David & Binner, Jane, 2004. "The Optimal Level of Monetary Aggregation in the UK," Working Papers 2004:7, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 26 Jan 2005.
    14. Smeulders, Bart & Crama, Yves & Spieksma, Frits C.R., 2019. "Revealed preference theory: An algorithmic outlook," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 272(3), pages 803-815.
    15. Douglas Fisher & Adrian R. Fleissig & Apostolos Serletis, 2006. "An Empirical Comparison of Flexible Demand System Functional Forms," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Money And The Economy, chapter 13, pages 247-277, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    16. Elger, C. Thomas & Jones, Barry E. & Edgerton, David L. & Binner, Jane M., 2008. "A Note On The Optimal Level Of Monetary Aggregation In The United Kingdom," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 117-131, February.
    17. Anderson, Richard G. & Duca, John V. & Fleissig, Adrian R. & Jones, Barry E., 2019. "New monetary services (Divisia) indexes for the post-war U.S," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 3-17.
    18. Apostolos Serletis & Libo Xu, "undated". "Consumption, Leisure, and Money," Working Papers 2019-08, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 06 Jul 2019.
    19. Jones, Barry E. & Dutkowsky, Donald H. & Elger, Thomas, 2005. "Sweep programs and optimal monetary aggregation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 483-508, February.
    20. Barnett, William A. & Serletis, Apostolos, 2008. "Measuring Consumer Preferences and Estimating Demand Systems," MPRA Paper 12318, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:econom:v:147:y:2008:i:2:p:275-281. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Haili He). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jeconom .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.