The following is an excerpt from the May 23 blog post "Liberty Street Economics" (New York Federal Reserve Bank). What does the household survey suggest about the expected relative size of income and substitution effects for labor supply? May 23, 2018

David consumes two things: gasoline (g) and bread (b). david's utility function is u(g, b) = 10g^0.25 b^0.75. use the lagrange technique to solve for david's optimal choices of gasoline and bread as a function of the price of gasoline, p_g, the price of bread, p_b, and his income m. with recent decrease in the price of gasoline (maybe due to external shock such as shale gas production) does david increase his consumption of gasoline? for david, how does partial differential g/partial differential p_g depend on his income m? that is, how does david's change in gasoline consumption due to an increase in the price of gasoline depend on his income level? to answer these questions, find the cross-partial derivative, |partial differential^2 g/partial differential m partial differential p_g.