IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this article

A nonparametric test of weak separability and consumer preferences

Author Info

  • Fleissig, Adrian R.
  • Whitney, Gerald A.
Registered author(s):

    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.

    Download Info

    If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

    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 look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

    Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Econometrics.

    Volume (Year): 147 (2008)
    Issue (Month): 2 (December)
    Pages: 275-281

    as
    in new window

    Handle: RePEc:eee:econom:v:147:y:2008:i:2:p:275-281
    Contact details of provider: Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jeconom

    Keywords: Weak separability procedure Revealed preference;

    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.:

    as in new window
    1. Russell Davidson & James MacKinnon, 2000. "Bootstrap tests: how many bootstraps?," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 55-68.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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 363-77, July.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Serletis, Apostolos & Shahmoradi, Asghar, 2007. "Flexible Functional Forms, Curvature Conditions, And The Demand For Assets," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(04), pages 455-486, September.
    8. 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.
    9. Swofford, James L., 2000. "Microeconomic foundations of an optimal currency area," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 121-128, December.
    10. Barnett, William A & Fisher, Douglas & Serletis, Apostolos, 1992. "Consumer Theory and the Demand for Money," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(4), pages 2086-2119, December.
    11. John J. Seater & Adrian Fleissig & Allastair Hall, . "GARP, Separability and the Representative Agent," Working Paper Series 17, North Carolina State University, Department of Economics.
    12. Fisher, Douglas, 1992. "Money-Demand Variability: A Demand-Systems Approach," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 10(2), pages 143-51, April.
    13. Christensen, Laurits R & Jorgenson, Dale W & Lau, Lawrence J, 1975. "Transcendental Logarithmic Utility Functions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 367-83, June.
    14. 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.
    15. de PERETTI, PHILIPPE, 2005. "Testing The Significance Of The Departures From Utility Maximization," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(03), pages 372-397, June.
    16. 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.
    17. Fleissig, Adrian R, 1997. "The Consumer Consumption Conundrum: An Explanation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(2), pages 177-92, May.
    18. Terrell, Dek, 1996. "Incorporating Monotonicity and Concavity Conditions in Flexible Functional Forms," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(2), pages 179-94, March-Apr.
    19. Caves, Douglas W & Christensen, Laurits R, 1980. "Global Properties of Flexible Functional Forms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 422-32, June.
    20. 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.
    21. 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 241-46, April.
    22. 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 387-97, April.
    23. 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.
    24. Diewert, W. E. & Parkan, C., 1985. "Tests for the consistency of consumer data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 127-147.
    25. Varian, Hal R, 1982. "The Nonparametric Approach to Demand Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 945-73, July.
    26. 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.
    27. 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.
    28. 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.
    29. Varian, Hal R., 1985. "Non-parametric analysis of optimizing behavior with measurement error," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 445-458.
    30. Serletis, Apostolos, 1987. "On the Demand for Money in the United States," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 249-55.
    31. W. E. Diewert, 1973. "Afriat and Revealed Preference Theory," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 40(3), pages 419-425.
    32. Gross, John, 1995. "Testing Data for Consistency with Revealed Preference," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(4), pages 701-10, November.
    33. Drake, Leigh, 1996. "Relative Prices in the UK Personal Sector Money Demand Function," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(438), pages 1209-26, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

    as in new window


    Cited by:

    1. Laurens Cherchye & Ian Crawford & Bram De Rock & Frederic Vermeulen, 2012. "Aggregation without the aggravation? Nonparametric analysis of the representative consumer," CeMMAP working papers CWP03/12, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    2. Ian Crawford & Bram De Rock, 2014. "Empirical Revealed Preference," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 503-524, 08.
    3. Laurens CHERCHYE & Thomas DEMUYNCK & Bram DE ROCK, 2011. "Revealed preference tests for weak separability: an integer programming approach," Working Papers Department of Economics ces11.25, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    4. John Quah, 2014. "A test for weakly separable preferences," Economics Series Working Papers 708, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    5. 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.

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Access and download statistics

    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: (Shamier, Wendy)

    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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 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.

    This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.