The geometry of consumer preference aggregation

Fedor Sandomirskiy and Philip Ushchev

No 19100, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We revisit a classical question of how individual consumer preferences and incomes shape aggregate behavior. We develop a method that applies to populations with homothetic preferences and reduces the hard problem of aggregation to simply computing a weighted average in the space of logarithmic expenditure functions. We apply the method to identify aggregation-invariant preference domains, characterize aggregate preferences from common domains like linear or Leontief, and describe indecomposable preferences that do not correspond to the aggregate behavior of any non-trivial population. Applications include robust welfare analysis, information design, discrete choice models, pseudo-market mechanisms, and preference identification.

Date: 2024-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19100 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The geometry of consumer preference aggregation (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19100

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP19100

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().