Consumer Expenditures: New Measures and Old Motives

Description

Changing consumer choices have built microchip factories where cotton fields used to be and have doomed cities from New Bedford to Detroit, while the impact of these choices on jobs and tax revenues has stimulated the creation of models of consumer behavior. Even finely tuned econometric models, however, have not served well as guides for policy ch

"Consumer expenditures is a must for anyone employing twentieth-century American consumption data. It should be read by anyone studying household spending patterns more generally, for Lebergott's embodiment of tastes in the empirical analysis. And its first eight chapters are fun for anyone looking for wit and humour in our often dry field of economic history."--Economic History Review