Empirical strategies for incorporating weak complementarity into consumer demand models

This article appraises existing empirical strategies for incorporating weak complementarity into consumer demand models. The repackaging, integrating-back, and discontinuity approaches are evaluated in terms of their behavioral implications and potential usefulness for applied research. The appraisal suggests that the repackaging approach offers the most flexibility and tractability in the multi-good demand system framework, but the integrating-back approach holds considerable promise in the single-good context. A multi-good empirical comparison suggests that qualitatively similar policy inference arises from different repackaging approaches.