| Sumario: | Systems of community excess demand (or aggregate market demand) functions, as opposed to individual demand functions, need not satisfy any restrictions other than an adding-up property (Walras' Law) if the number of consumers is greater than the number of goods (Sonnenschein (1972, 1973a, b), Debreu (1974), McFadden et al. (1974), Mantel (1974, 1975), Diewert (1977)). In particular, in general there will be no symmetry restrictions of the type derived by Slutsky (1915) for a system of demand functions generated by a single utility maximizing consumer. This paper is concerned with the econometric implications of these results. In particular, we look for assumptions on either tastes or the distribution of income which will allow us to utilize the Slutsky symmetry conditions in the econometric estimation of market demand equations. In Section 2 we postulate that every consumer has the same preferences, and individual incomes can differ arbitrarily, while in Section 3 we allow for some variations in individual preferences, but the distribution of income is restricted.
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