IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-349-22658-0_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The New Household Economics, General X-Efficiency Theory and Consumption in Developing Countries

In: Consumption and Development

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey James

    (Tilburg University)

Abstract

Associated mainly with the work of Gary Becker, the ‘new household economics’ views consumption as a process of ‘producing’ characteristics from purchased inputs and labour time.1 As such, it establishes a pioneering link between consumption and the theory of production. Among other things, this analogy enables one to analyse the efficiency with which the various activities in the household, such as cleaning, administering health care, cooking and feeding, are carried out. For, just as production by the firm may be more or less efficient, so too can households vary in the efficiency with which they conduct their various activities. When they are applied to activities that are closely related to basic needs (such as infant feeding or the provision of health care), these variations may help to explain the differential extent to which poor households are able to meet the basic needs (for hunger, thirst and so on) of their members and, more specifically, why education seems to be so important in accounting for these differences.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey James, 1993. "The New Household Economics, General X-Efficiency Theory and Consumption in Developing Countries," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Consumption and Development, chapter 9, pages 182-198, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-22658-0_9
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-22658-0_9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-22658-0_9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.