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: Nov, 1991, Volume 59, Issue 6

Empirical Evidence on the Law of Demand

https://doi.org/0012-9682(199111)59:6<1525:EEOTLO>2.0.CO;2-F
p. 1525-1549

Michael Jerison, Werner Hildenbrand, Wolfgang Hardle

A sufficient condition for market demand to satisfy the Law of Demand is that the mean of all households' income effect matrices be positive definite. We show how this mean income effect matrix can be estimated from cross section data under metonymy, an assumption about the distribution of households' characteristics. The estimation procedure uses the nonparametric method of average derivatives. Income effect matrices estimated this way from U.K. family expenditure data are in fact positive definite. This result can be explained by a special form of heteroskedasticity in the data: households' demands are more dispersed at higher income levels.


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