5008 1 archive 2871 disk0/00/00/50/08 2005-06-30 2009-08-20 14:26:38 2009-08-20 14:26:38 journalp show 0 en da2c1 main notyet 0 FALSE Blow Laura Browning Martin Crawford Ian unpub 1organics 5markets 7consumer organics_countries_europe product characteristics, revealed rpeference Characteristics models have been found to be useful in many areas of economics. However, their empirical implementation tends to rely heavily on functional form assumptions. In this paper we develop a revealed preference approach to characteristics models. We derive the necessary and su¢ cient empirical conditions under which data on the market behaviour of heterogeneous, price-taking consumers are nonparametrically consistent with the consumer characteristics model. Where these conditions hold, we show how information may be recovered on individual consumer’s marginal valuations of product attributes. In some cases marginal valuations are point identi…ed and in other cases we can only recover bounds. Where the conditions fail we highlight the role which the introduction of unobserved product attributes can play in rationalising the data. We implement these ideas using consumer panel data on the Danish milk market. 2005 published Review of Economic Studies restricted 4484 1 5008 1 application/pdf en validuser

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