Consumption Patterns

The Keele Economics Department produces this series of research papers in order to stimulate discussion and invite feedback. Copyright remains with the authors. All papers in the kerp series are available for downloading from the Keele Economics website, via Abstract This paper establishes a theoretical framework to characterise the optimal behaviour of individuals who receive income periodically but make consumption decisions on a more frequent basis. The model incorporates price uncertainty and imperfect credit markets. The simulated numerical solution to this model shows that weekly consumption functions are ordered such that the functions within the payment period are highest in the first and the last week of the payment cycle for all wealth levels. Using weekly expenditure data from the FES we estimate the coefficient of relative risk aversion (point estimates are between 2 and 7) and the extent of measurement error in the data (which accounts for approximately 50% of the variance in the data).