Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Guido W. Imbens • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: May, 2009, Volume 77, Issue 3

The Microeconomics of Efficient Group Behavior: Identification

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA5929
p. 763-799

P.‐A. Chiappori, I. Ekeland

Consider a group consisting of members facing a common budget constraint =1: any demand vector belonging to the budget set can be (privately or publicly) consumed by the members. Although the intragroup decision process is not known, it is assumed to generate Pareto‐efficient outcomes; neither individual consumptions nor intragroup transfers are observable. The paper analyzes when, to what extent, and under which conditions it is possible to recover the underlying structure—individual preferences and the decision process—from the group's aggregate behavior. We show that the general version of the model is not identified. However, a simple exclusion assumption (whereby each member does not consume at least one good) is sufficient to guarantee generic identifiability of the welfare‐relevant structural concepts.


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Supplemental Material

Supplement to "The Micro Economics of Efficient Group Behavior: Identification"

General results of the paper illustrated on a parametric example.