The Law of Demand When Income Is Price Dependent

We identify sufficient conditions which guarantee that aggregate demand is approximately linear in income and satisfies a restricted form of the law of demand in a market where income is price dependent. The conditions involve the way preferences are distributed: loosely speaking, preferences have t...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Econometrica. - Wiley. - 65(1997), 6, Seite 1421-1442
Format: Online-Aufsatz
Sprache:English
Veröffentlicht: 1997
Zugriff auf das übergeordnete Werk:Econometrica
Schlagworte:The law of demand homothetic transformations exchange economies production economies heterogeneity Engel curves Economics Business
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:We identify sufficient conditions which guarantee that aggregate demand is approximately linear in income and satisfies a restricted form of the law of demand in a market where income is price dependent. The conditions involve the way preferences are distributed: loosely speaking, preferences have to be sufficiently heterogeneous. The definition of heterogeneity we use is similar to Grandmont (1992) but it is applied to homothetic transformations as introduced in Jerison (1982) and Grandmont (1987) and allows for the possibility of atoms. Another condition is that the distributions of preferences and income are independent. In exchange and production economies, our result guarantees the uniqueness of the price equilibrium and its stability under the Walras' tatonnement.
ISSN:14680262
DOI:10.2307/2171742