Most tests of recent consumption function hypotheses have been confined to a single country or, in some cases, to a very small number of countries.' Two studies which do involve data drawn from a large number of countries are those of Hohenbalken and Tintner 2 and Yang.3 We first consider their work, and then discuss the theoretical models employed in our analysis.4 The Hohenbalken-Tintner study was, in significant measure, aimed at the estimation of policy models and it did not purport to test complex consumption hypotheses. Hohenbalken and Tintner assume a simple version of the Keynesian consumption function, involving gross national product as an explanatory variable, although they supplement the latter with lagged gross national product and with a trend variable. The variables are in constant prices per capita. In general, the additional explanatory variables were found to be statistically nonsignificant. Yang was concerned mainly with testing basic Keynesian consumption theory with data from both developing countries and industrially advanced ones. Yang's analysis encompassed eighteen countries, and used United Nations data for the period 1950-1959. The variables were defined per capita in constant prices. Two forms were tested, with disposable income as an explanatory variable supplemented with a change-in-income variable. The latter was seldom significant, and assumed a negative sign in the majority of cases. (Its sign was positive in several instances including Austria, Belgium, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.) Further analysis suggested that there was a direct relationship between the stability of growth in disposable income and overall goodness of fit.