The Representative Agent Hypothesis: An Empirical Test

Manisha Chakrabarty and Anke Schmalenbach

No 26/2002, Bonn Econ Discussion Papers from University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE)

Abstract: This paper empirically tests the validity of using only mean income as a representative variable for the whole population in the aggregate consumption relation and of assuming time-invariance of the coefficients in this relation, as done in macromodels. We use a statistical distributional approach of aggregation to test these properties on the UK-Family Expenditure Survey [1974-1993]. It is observed that the time-invariance assumption is rejected in most cases. A bootstrap test also suggests that in addition to mean income, the dispersion of income matters significantly for the commodity group services in several years and for clothing & footwear and total nondurable in some years, thus invalidating the representative agent hypothesis.

Keywords: Representative Agent Hypothesis; Time Invariance; Heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 C14 D12 E21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:bonedp:262002

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