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We make use of rich microdata from the Belgian MEqIn survey, which contains detailed information on individual consumption, public consumption inside households, and time use. We explain the observed household behavior by means of a collective model that integrates marriage market restrictions on intrahousehold allocation patterns. We adopt a revealed preference approach that abstains from any functional form assumptions on individual utility functions or intrahousehold decision processes. This allows us to (set) identify the sharing rule, which governs the intrahousehold sharing of time and money, and to quantify economies of scale within households. We use these results to conduct a robust individual welfare and inequality analysis, hereby highlighting the important role of detailed consumption and time use data.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether household preferences satisfy the assumption of base-independence, to examine the effects of household income on equivalence scales and thereby food consumption economies of scale and to examine how far conventional poverty rates require adjustment when scale economies in food consumption are taken into consideration.

To achieve these aims, the authors use a Pendakur (1999) adaptation of the test of base-independence, and income dependent Engel (1895) equivalence scales.

In Sri Lanka, the hypothesis of base-independence is rejected: the equivalence scales increase with household income both at the national and the sectoral level, that is urban, rural and estate sectors. This suggests that low-income households enjoy greater scale economies. After adjusting for scale economies, urban, rural and estate poverty headcount ratios decline by 3.2, 8.8 and 13.7, respectively, while at the national level the decline is about 8.3.

The results are based on the assumption that all of the adults in the households have identical tastes, irrespective of their gender and age. Furthermore, the survey data exclude three districts in the northern province of Sri Lanka due to resettlement activities took place after the civil war.

Higher scale economies among the poor imply that poverty among low-income households is overstated when using traditional measures of poverty rates.

The novelty of this paper is that it provides insights on the effect of income on food consumption economies of scale and implications of this phenomenon on poverty estimates in the context of a developing country like Sri Lanka.

The authors aim to demonstrate the impact of allowing for unequal intra-household distribution of resources on income poverty and income inequality.

The paper applies a collective consumption model to study the intra-household distribution of resources in Visegrád countries (V4). It utilises subjective financial satisfaction as a proxy for indirect utility from individual consumption to estimate the indifference scales within couples instead of the traditional equivalence scale. The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2013 and 2018 data are applied.

This study’s results indicate substantial economies of scale from living in a couple that are generally higher than implied by the commonly applied equivalence scale. The sharing rule estimates suggest that at the mean of distribution factors, women receive a consumption share between 0.4 and 0.6; however, some of the results are close to an equal sharing of 0.5. The female consumption share rises with her contribution to household income. Regarding income poverty and inequality, the authors show that both these measures might be underestimated in the traditional approach to equal sharing of resources.

The authors add to the empirics by estimating indifference scales for Czechia (CZ), Hungary (HU), Poland (PL) and Slovakia (SK), countries that have not been involved in previous research.

The chapter estimates the cost of maintaining a child, at different ages, the cost of being single, and the cost of additional adults present in a family, with the aim of making comparable the income levels of different households. The study investigates the issue of econometric identification of equivalence scales within a demand system modified to include demographic characteristics consistently with economic theory. It shows that a robust estimation of equivalence scales must take into formal consideration the problem of econometric identification. The estimate also puts forward all-encompassing demographic specifications to identify costs due to differences in needs, household lifestyles, and economies of scale.

On the basis of corporate wholesale and hypermarket stores, this study aims to investigate the relationship between energy consumption, physical building characteristics and operational sales performance and the impact of energy management on the corporate environmental performance.

A very unique dataset of METRO GROUP over 19 European countries is analyzed in a sophisticated econometric approach for the timeframe from January 2011 until December 2014. Multiple regression models are applied for the panel, to explain the electricity consumption of the corporate assets on a monthly basis and the total energy consumption on an annual basis. Using Generalized Additive Models, to model nonlinear covariate effects, the authors decompose the response variables into the implicit contribution of building characteristics, operational sales performance and energy management attributes, under control of the outdoor weather conditions and spatial–temporal effects.

METRO GROUP’s wholesale and hypermarket stores prove significant reductions in electricity and total energy consumption over the analyzed timeframe. Due to the implemented energy consumption and carbon emission reduction targets, the influence of the energy management measures, such as the identification of stores associated with the lowest energy performance, was found to contribute toward a more efficient corporate environmental performance.

In the context of corporate responsibility/sustainability of wholesale, hypermarket and retail corporations, the energy efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions from corporates’ real estate assets is of emerging interest. Besides the insights about the energy efficiency of corporate real estate assets, the role of the energy management, contributing to a more efficient corporate environmental performance, is not yet investigated for a large European wholesale and hypermarket portfolio.

Although preference for sons has been documented among parents in developing countries, it is an open question whether and to what extent intra-household resource allocation is influenced by family sex composition. This study investigates the effects of sex composition on intra-household resource allocation based on the collective household model of Dunbar, Lewbel, and Pendakur (2013). I extend their model to estimate the influences on a household member’s resource share by observing how budget shares of a private assignable good vary not only with total expenditure and family size, but also with family sex composition. Using data from the 2005 Iranian Household Income and Expenditure Survey, I find that family composition significantly affects intra-household resource allocation in Iranian rural areas. Specifically, rural parents assign 1.6–1.9 percentage points more resources toward their sons. These resources are essentially coming at the expense of mothers. In all-boy families, mothers get 2.8–3.6 percentage points fewer resources than they do in all-girl families. These effects are more pronounced among farmer families than nonfarmer families. However, I find no significant role for gender composition in intra-household resource allocation in urban areas.

The purpose of this paper is to exam the relationship between migration patterns and migrant workers' consumption and study how to upgrade the consumption of migrant workers.

Based on survey data from 3,368 migrant workers in China, this paper employs the extended linear expenditure system (ELES) model to analyze the difference of migrant workers' consumption in different migration patterns. A consumption function containing migration patterns was constructed to examine the impact of migration patterns on the consumption of migrant workers.

The consumption structure of migrant workers is in accordance with the migration theory and life cycle theory; there is a significant difference in the consumption between migrant workers of different migration patterns. Migrant workers who move to the city separated from their family members have lower levels of consumption, and the consumption structure shows the characteristics of “survival consumption,” mainly based on “food, residence and traffic.” On the contrary, migrant workers who move to the city with all their family members have higher levels of consumption, and their consumption is well structured, showing a gradual trend of upgrading and transformation.

This paper enriches the empirical literature on analyzing the migration patterns and their impact on migrant workers' consumption, which can help policymakers design reasonable policies of adaptation for the consumption upgrading of migrant workers.

Many aspects of well-being depend critically on individual-level expenditure and consumption. The Millennium Development Goals include the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women, which partly have to do with women’s access to resources within households. Many important questions in labour, public and development economics also hinge on the intra-household distribution of resources. This paper aims to estimate the resource shares within a household in the rural and urban sectors of West Bengal through a collective household model, where each household member has a specific utility function. The sharing rule parameters, that determine the apportionment of resources between members within a household, are estimated in an intra-household collective framework. The analysis is based on a system of log-quadratic Engel curves estimated using the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumption expenditure data of the Indian National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) for rural and urban sectors separately for the state of West Bengal.

The sharing rule parameters (that determine the apportionment of resources between members) within a household are estimated in an intra-household collective framework as suggested by Dunbar et al. (2013). The analysis is based on a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) estimated using the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumption expenditure data of the Indian NSSO.

In this paper, the authors estimate the sharing rule of total household expenditure between couples in a household in the state of West Bengal. They use a modified version of the QUAIDS and the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumer expenditure data provided by the NSSO. From the exercise, it emerges that on an average, the resource shares between husband and wife in a household is about 66:34% in the rural sector and about 60:40% in the urban sector. Based on a classification of households by the distribution of resource shares, where higher resource share for the husband is classified as “Husband dominated” and the reverse as “Wife dominated”, the percentage of “Husband dominated” households is much more in both sectors. This unequal distribution of resources may have far-reaching consequences on allocation of expenditure on the children of the household. The authors leave this exercise as a future project.

This paper is an attempt to estimate the sharing rule for households using NSSO consumption expenditure data. This paper also highlights the intra household unequal resource allocation through the sharing rule. They use a modified version of the QUAIDS and the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumer expenditure data provided by the NSSO. From the exercise, it emerges that on an average, the resource shares between husband and wife in a household is about 66:34% in the rural sector and about 60:40% in the urban sector. Based on a classification of households by the distribution of resource shares, where higher resource share for the husband is classified as “Husband dominated” and the reverse as “Wife dominated”, the percentage of “Husband dominated” households is much more in both sectors. This unequal distribution of resources may have far-reaching consequences on allocation of expenditure on the children of the household. The authors leave this exercise as a future project.

The literature on household behavior contains hardly any empirical research on the within-household distributional effects of tax-benefit policies. We simulate this effect in the framework of a collective model of labor supply when shifting from a joint to an individual taxation system in France. We show that the net-of-tax relative earning potential of the wife is a significant determinant of intrahousehold negotiation but with very low elasticity. Consequently, the labor supply responses to the reform are essentially driven by the traditional substitution and income effects as in a unitary model. For some households only, the reform alters the intrahousehold distribution in a way that tends to change normative conclusions. A sensitivity analysis shows that the distributional effects captured by the collective model would be significant only for reforms both radical and of extended scope.