Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2016
Since the Becker-Lancaster approach (1965-66) to consumer-demand, there has been a large body of literature on consumption technology. Part of it was intended to build in consumption technology into the classical consumption models. More specifically, the allocation of time has been introduced in various models. Mostly this introduction was limited to the time-variable as just one more argument in the utility function ana a time-restriction. Nevertheless this approach has proved to be useful.
This way of handling the time input is the most obvious one, when demand functions are directly specified. But if one starts off from a functionally specified utility function, consistency asks for the introduction of the time component by functionally specifying the consumption technology. In this contribution, we have tried to apply this reasoning to the linear Expenditure System, derived from the Stone-Geary utility function and an appropriate consumption technology. A first empirical exercice for Belgian data is made to a simplified version.
We wish to thank Prof. A. Barten and W. Pauwels for helpful comments.