IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecj/ac2003/185.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Representative Agent Hypothesis: An Empirical Test

Author

Listed:
  • Schmalenbach, Anke

    (University of Bonn)

  • Manisha Chakrabarty

Abstract

This paper empirically tests the validity of using only /mean /income as a representative variable in the aggregate consumption relation and of assuming time-invariance of the coefficients in this relation, as done in macromodels. We use a statistical distributional approach of aggregation to test these properties on the UK-Family Expenditure Survey [1974-1993]. The time-invariance assumption is rejected in most cases. A bootstrap test also suggests that in addition to mean income, the /dispersion /of income matters significantly for the commodity group /services /in several years and for /total/ /nondurable/ in some years, thus invalidating the /representative agent hypothesis/.

Suggested Citation

  • Schmalenbach, Anke & Manisha Chakrabarty, 2003. "The Representative Agent Hypothesis: An Empirical Test," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 185, Royal Economic Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecj:ac2003:185
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.org/res2003/Schmalenbach.pdf
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    representative agent hypothesis; time invariance; heterogeneity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C12 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Hypothesis Testing: General
    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ecj:ac2003:185. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.