Modeling Household Behavior in Developing Countries: Discussion
讨论农业家庭如何应对风险，重点关注不同家庭消费平滑能力的差异，以及家庭内部个体在收入冲击下的不同影响和福利后果，并探讨集体家庭模型对传统假设的挑战。
A large and growing body of literature has examined how agricultural households cope with risk. Much of the work has focused on which types of households are better able to smooth consumption, testing whether households with more resources and greater access to income-smoothing institutions, such as credit markets or well-functioning labor markets exhibit greater consumption smoothing. However, income shocks may have different effects upon different individuals within households, and differences in individual ability to smooth income or consumption may have welfare consequences which go beyond foregone income. The development of collective household models challenges the assumption that individuals within households maximize a single utility function. The assumption of income pooling has also been rejected in a growing body of empirical research on intrahousehold resource allocation. However, research on risk-pooling within households and differences in individual abilities to smooth consumption is relatively new. Selected papers are discussed.