Studies in the Internal Structure of Consumption
This book is of interest to economists working in applied demand analysis, marketing professionals studying product substitution and complementarity, and policymakers evaluating the effects of taxes, subsidies, and regulatory interventions on consumer behavior. Applying the analytical framework on the internal structure of consumption, this book explores how different categories of consumer spending interact and how these relationships shape the broader structure of consumption.
The analyses focus on timely and policy-relevant issues, including the distributional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, the implementation of safe drinking water standards (with particular attention to low-income households), and the potential effects of carbon taxes on consumer expenditures.
A key strength of the framework lies in its ability to derive comprehensive arrays of own- and cross-price elasticities from household expenditure survey data—even in the absence of direct price information.
Lester D. Taylor is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona, where he taught for 36 years. He holds a B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Iowa (1960) and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University (1963). Before joining Arizona, he taught at both Harvard and the University of Michigan. His career includes service as a senior staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (1964–65) and as an advisor to the Ministry of Planning in Colombia (1967–68), as part of a Harvard-led economic development team. Professor Taylor’s research has focused extensively on the econometric estimation of price and income elasticities—particularly in the electricity and telecommunications sectors—as well as on household consumption and saving behavior. He is the author or co-author of more than 80 journal articles and over a dozen books.