[This paper develops an iterative procedure for estimating "specific" and "income" consumer unit scales in Engel curve analysis. The proposed procedure is essentially a modification of the Prais and Houthakker method and is illustrated by means of a numerical example based on the Indian National Sample Survey data.]
[The properties of systems of investment equations derived under the hypothesis of present value maximization are investigated. The possibility that either the optimal time rate of change in some factor or the stationary level of some stock may increase with its own rental rate is shown to be consistent with the hypothesis in the case of more than one factor. A condition necessary for this result is that marginal products depend on the rates of which factor levels are justified.]
[This paper is concerned with showing differentiability and measure theoretic properties on demand functions. The main results are roughly as follows. (i) Demand is differentiable and the Slutsky equation holds for almost all prices if demand satisfies a Lipschitz condition in income (except possibly for a closed cone of prices of measure zero) and utility is concave. This includes the homothetic case which is given special attention in Section 4. (ii) For the Slutsky equation to indicate demand behavior in the large, it is sufficient that along any given indifference curve the ratio of changes in price to changes in quantity be bounded from zero (Section 5). (iii) Even with almost everywhere differentiable demand derived from continuously differentiable utility, most change in demand does not necessarily take place where the Slutsky equation is valid (Section 5). (iv) By way of proof of Theorems 1-3, it is shown that the maximand in a Lagrange problem is differentiable under appropriate conditions on the function being maximized (Theorem 6, Section 3, and Appendix). (v) For preferences as in (ii) and for almost all wealths, equilibrium is locally unique (Section 6).]
[In this paper we construct a model that describes the behavior of the foreign exchange market and Exchange Fund. Cross-spectral and regression analysis of daily data are used to show that official intervention contributed significantly to the short-run stability of Canadian exchange rates.]
[The problem of the individual's consumption and portfolio choices over time has been the focus of recent studies by a number of authors. An attempt is made here to extend these results by examining the impact of transaction costs on optimal consumption and portfolio decisions. We are able to show that these costs considerably modify available results and greatly increase the difficulty of analyzing the consumer choice problem. The major reason is that now not only wealth, but also the composition of wealth, becomes important in the decision making process. To keep the exposition reasonably manageable we consider only a constant relative risk averse utility function and confine explicit attention to a two-period horizon. Since it is now necessary to examine portfolio choices in detail, we limit portfolio opportunities to a riskless asset, cash, and a risky asset, stock, with a random return. We assume proportional transaction cost for purchases or sales of stock. Wealth is taken to be the sum of cash and stock at the beginning of a period, while income is assumed to be zero, or included in initial wealth.]
[What can we say about the competitive equilibrium price system for an uncertain economy in which each risk concerns just one individual? Three interrelated concepts of equilibrium are considered. They show how and under which conditions the contingent price for a contract to deliver one unit of some good if some event occurs tends to be equal to the product of the sure price of the good and the probability of the event.]