The Identification of Fixed Costs from Consumer Behaviour
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Some household expenditures, such as those for subsistence or basic needs, are fixed. Using the methodology of equivalence scales, we develop a model in which differences in fixed costs of characteristics across households can be identified from household behaviour. Equivalent expenditure for a household is the expenditure needed to bring a reference household, such as a single childless adult, to the level of well-being of household members. The equivalence scale for the household is the ratio of expenditure to equivalent expenditure. Only two types of equivalent-expenditure functions are used in practice: those in which the ratio of household expenditure and equivalent expenditure is independent of expenditure, and those in which their difference is independent of expenditure. We propose a class of equivalent-expenditure functions that allows for differences in fixed costs and generalizes both relationships. Using Canadian consumer-demand micro-data, we estimate equivalent-expenditure func-tions and equivalence scales. We find that, for large households, fixed costs of characteristics are large and positive, resulting in equivalence scales that decline with expenditure.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".