This paper presents estimates of the distributional welfare impacts ofthe actual price rises of energy and nonenergy commodities during the1970-80 decade in the United States. Measures of welfare changes basedon net compensating variations are computed for families that differ with respect to demographic characteristics, initial total expenditurelevels, and total expenditure growth profiles over the decade. For comparison, measures of welfare change based solely on the changes inenergy prices are computed. The author shows that welfare differencesdue to initial expenditure levels or demographic profiles are minor incomparison to welfare differences due to different expenditure growthprofiles.

This paper presents estimates of the distributional welfare impacts of the actual price rises of energy and nonenergy commodities during the 1970-80 decade in the United States. Measures of welfare change based on net compensating variations are computed for different types of families. These show that welfare differences due to changes in commodity prices are minor compared to welfare differences due to different income growth patterns over the decade.

A new and easily implementable framework for the empirical analysis of the relationship between aggregate and individual wages is developed. Aggregate real wages are shown to contain three important bias terms: one associated with the dispersion of individual wages, a second deriving from compositional changes in the (selected) sample of workers, and a third reflecting the distribution of working hours. Their importance for interpreting the path of aggregate wages and of the returns to education for recent experience in Britain is highlighted. A close correspondence between the estimated biases and the patterns of differences shown by aggregate wages is established.

new econometric model of aggregate consumer behavior in the United States and to apply this model to the analysis of impacts of alternative economic policies on the welfare of individual consuming units. The model incorporates time-series data on quantities consumed, prices, the level and distribution of income, and demographic characteristics of the population. It also incorporates cross-section data on the allocation of consumer expenditures for households with different demographic characteristics. Our econometric model is based on the theory of exact aggregation developed by Lau (1977a, c). This theory makes it possible to dispense with the notion of a representative consumer in constructing models of aggregate consumer behavior. One of the most remarkable implications of Lau's theory of exact aggregation is that systems of demand functions for individuals with common demographic characteristics can be recovered uniquely from the system of aggregate demand functions. Using the individual demand functions we can analyze the impact of economic policy on consumer welfare.