Measuring Consumer Surplus with Unknown Hicksian Demands

Abstract

The objective of this paper to introduce the Slutsky demand curve as a tool in welfare analysis. It is shown that the compensating or equivalent variation can in most cases be measured to within a fraction of a percent of their true value without any numerical integration techniques. Two well known examples in the literature are explored. A theoretical measure of the accuracy of the Slutsky based measure, relative to the Marshallian measure, is developed. The approach is locally path independent and can be used to measure the money value of a ration. Finally it application to models of labour supply is explored an an error in the literature is corrected.