Are Poor Cities Cheap for Everyone? Non-Homotheticity and the Cost of Living Across U.S. Cities
Are Poor Cities Cheap for Everyone? Non-Homotheticity and the Cost of Living Across U.S. Cities
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贫困城市对每个人来说都便宜吗？
DOI：
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发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Jessie Handbury
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Jessie Handbury
本文表明，市场上提供的产品和价格与当地收入特定的口味相关。为了量化这种变化对福利的影响，我计算了当地的价格指数，这些指数是由数千种食品杂货的非相似需求模型建立的。这些指数揭示了富裕家庭和贫困家庭对富裕城市和贫困城市可用选择集的看法存在很大差异。相对于低收入家庭，富裕城市的高收入家庭每美元支出的效用比贫困城市高40%。在不同社区的商店中也观察到类似的模式。这种差异大多是由于在不同市场经营的连锁店所提供的产品种类不同，而不是所收取的相对价格不同。
This paper shows that the products and prices offered in markets are correlated with local income-specific tastes. To quantify the welfare impact of this variation, I calculate local price indexes micro-founded by a model of non-homothetic demand over thousands of grocery products. These indexes reveal large differences in how wealthy and poor households perceive the choice sets available in wealthy and poor cities. Relative to low-income households, high-income households enjoy 40 percent higher utility per dollar expenditure in wealthy cities, relative to poor cities. Similar patterns are observed across stores in different neighborhoods. Most of this variation is explained by differences in the product assortment offered, rather than the relative prices charged, by chains that operate in different markets.