Residential Electricity Revisited

The following is a report on various attempts to update and improve an earlier analysis of residential electricity demand (Houthakker, Verleger, and Sheehan, 1974-hereafter referred to as HVS). To understand what is new the reader should first know what has been maintained, namely: the logarithmic flow-adjustment model which estimates this year's consumption from last year's consumption, this year's price and income, and possibly (though not in HVS) from other variables, the pooling of annual time series for 48 states using the error component approach of Balestra & Nerlove, the use of a "marginal price" for electricity. The present paper may be regarded as a verification of the first of these hypotheses, and to some extent of the other two.