Exact aggregation of consumer demand systems

This paper is divided into two parts which deal with closely connected issues. The first section of the paper explores the structure of consumer demand systems necessary and sufficient for exact aggregation. The second section addresses a related empirical question: what, if anything, do the restrictions imposed on exactly aggregable demand systems buy the econometrician engaged in estimating integrable consumer demands? In particular, if the objective of an empirical exercise is to estimate the demand systems of individual utility maximizing consumers and only aggregate expenditure information and information on the income and demographic composition of the population are available, then under what conditions can the parameters of the estimated aggregate expenditure system be used to uniquely identify the parameters of the underlying individual demand systems?     

Further analysis of cross-country comparison of consumer expenditure patterns

The present paper analyzes consumer expenditure pattern within the framework of classical demand theory. We compare the linear expenditure system (LES) with two other demand systems based on utility-maximizing behavior: a generalized linear expenditure system (GLES) and the indirect addilog expenditure system (IAES). Our data consists of annual time series, 1950–1965, for 11 OECD member countries.The main results of this paper are that consumer expenditure patterns can be explained by emperical demand models based on utility-maximizing behavior. Furthermore the GLES model, while not without its share of weaknesses, seems to be more attractive than the IAES and LES models.     

The analysis of consumer demand in Greece. Model selection and dynamic specification

The paper analyses the pattern of consumer demand in Greece exploring systematically the questions of the functional form of demand that best fits the data, the appropriate dynamic structure and the empirical validity of the constraints of demand theory. A general dynamic Almost Ideal demand model for four categories of consumer non-durables for the period 1958–1994 is estimated. The maintained specification rejects the static AI, its counterparts implied by the partial adjustment and autoregressive disturbances models and, upon applying a non-nested test, the Rotterdam specification. However, it cannot reject homogeneity and symmetry nor the hypothesis of structural stability.     

Inverse demand systems and choice of functional form

Barten (Empirical Economics 18 (1993) 129) recently advocated estimation of a synthetic demand system that mechanically nests four other popular differential demand models. This paper follows a similar strategy, but in the context of four inverse share-equation demand systems: The Inverse Translog Demand System (ITLDS); the Inverse Almost Ideal Demand System (IAIDS); the Inverse Lewbel Demand System (ILDS); and the Inverse Non-Separable Linear Expenditure System (INLES). Each of these specifications is artificially nested in a Hybrid Inverse Demand System (HIDS). An empirical application to three categories of quarterly U.S. meat demand data over the period 1961-1996 indicates the HIDS is a preferred specification.     

Fiscal policy simulations – a comparison of UK models

The problem of endowing large applied general equilibrium models with numerical values for parameters is formidable. For example, a complete set of own- and cross-price elasticities of demands for the MONASH model of the Australianeconomy involves in excess of 50000 items. Invoking the minimal assumptions that demand is generated by utility maximization reduces the load to about 26000 - obviously still a number much too large for unrestrained econometric estimation. To obtain demand systems estimates for a dozen or so generic commodities at a top level of aggregation (categories like ‘food’, ‘clothing and footwear’, etc.), typically Johansen's lead has been followed, and directly additive preferences imposed upon the underlying utility function. With the move beyond one-step linearized solutions of applied general equilibrium models, the functional form of the demand system adopted becomes an issue. The most celebrated of the additive-preference demand systems, the linear expenditure system (LES), has one drawback for empirical work; namely, the constancy of marginal budget shares (MBSs) - a liability shared with the Rotterdam system. To get around this, Theil and Clements used Holbrook Working's Engel specification in conjunction with additive preferences; unfortunately both Working's formulation and Deaton and Muellbauer's AIDS have the problem that, under large changes in real incomes, budget shares can stray outside the [0, 1] interval. It was such behaviour that led Cooper and McLaren to devise systems with better regularity properties. These systems, however, are not globally compatible with any additive preference system. In this paper we specify, and estimate, at the six-commodity level, an implicitly directly additive-preference demand system which allows MBSs to vary as a function of total real expenditure and which is globally regular throughout that part of the the price-expenditure space in which the consumer is at least affluent enough to meet subsistence requirements.     

The integrability of consumer demand functions

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the class of systems of consumer demand functions that are representable as ratios of first-order polynomial functions and are integrable. Starting from a general system of consumer demand functions representable as ratios, we impose successively the restrictions corresponding to homogeneity, summability, symmetry, non-negativity, and monotonicity. We find that the only such systems which are capable of modeling arbitrary own- and cross-substitution effects are the systems generated by transcendental logarithmic utility functions.     

Effects of Changes in Household Size,Consumer Taste & Preferences on Demand Pattern in India

Current research in applied demand analysis has been addressing the twin issues of degree of non-linearity or curvature of the Engel curves and the ability to capture price effects appropriately by the demand system. Further, in addition to income and prices, the role of demographic variables like household size, composition and dynamic aspects like consumer taste & preferences are also being ’ emphasized in recent literature. Continuous efforts are being made to modify the existing models and propose new ones to incorporate the above developments. The purpose of this study is to re-examine the usefulness of the popular linear expenditure system vis-à-vis the two other flexible models viz. Nasse expenditure system, a generalization of the linear expenditure system itself, and the almost ideal demand system in the above context for India.The empirical results indicate wide variation in marginal budget shares and demand elasticities across income groups, rural-urban sectors and alternative models. The household size and consumer taste & preferences are found to be statistically significant. The results confirm the earlier findings that there are significant changes in consumer tastes away from cereals and pulses in favor of other food and nonfood commodities. The results also show that flexible models, which are theoretically superior, gave unacceptable positive price responses for some commodities and violated second order conditions of utility maximization. It is found that some ad-hoc separability restrictions are needed, thereby limiting the flexibility of the model, to get negative own-price responses in these models. But, second order conditions are still violated. The tests of nested hypotheses also confirm the need for inclusion of household size, consumer taste, income group and rural-urban dummies along with their interaction variables in the demand system.

     

Consumer expenditure,the demand for money,and the Hall hypothesis

Although a considerable amount of work has been conducted on the validity of the Hall hypothesis, as applied to consumer expenditure, there has been negligible empirical work on the Hall hypothesis as applied to the demand for money. In this paper the Hallian hypothesis is applied to consumer expenditure and the demand for money using quarterly data for six countries.     

Testing the integrability of consumer demand functions: Federal Republic of Germany, 1950–1973

The purpose of this paper is to implement a new econometric methodology for testing the theory of consumer behavior. We begin by fitting systems of indirect and direct demand functions without requiring integrability. We then impose restrictions on the parameters of these functions implied by integrability. We test restrictions corresponding to homogeneity, summability, symmetry, nonnegativity, and monotonicity of systems of demand functions. We formulate tests based on two-sided critical intervals for restrictions that take the form of equalities. We employ tests based on one-sided critical intervals for restrictions that take the form of inequalities. We present empirical results for tests of integrability for German time series data on personal consumption expenditures for the period 1950–1973.     

Food Protection for Sale*

This article tests the Protection for Sale (PFS) model using detailed data from US food‐processing industries under alternative import‐demand specifications. All empirical results support the PFS model predictions and previous empirical work qualitatively. However, a surprising result is that we obtain weights between 2.6 and 3.6 for domestic welfare using import slopes or elasticities derived from domestic demand and supply functions. In contrast, results based on directly specified import demands (including the Armington model) yield the usual, unrealistically large estimates for the domestic welfare weight. We contend that this empirical paradox arises mainly because the explanatory variables tend to be extremely large for industries with low import ratios and/or low import elasticities (or slopes) resulting from relatively volatile import prices. The results with derived import parameters point to a much stronger role of campaign contributions within the PFS model than previously found.     

A BOX–COX CONSUMER DEMAND SYSTEM NESTING THE ALMOST IDEAL MODEL*

This article proposes a consumer demand system that has a generalized functional form characterized by the Box–Cox transformation. The new model offers a wider range of responses to both price and expenditure changes than the existing price independent generalized linear models, including the almost ideal demand system. Even with these features, its functional form is relatively simple and easy to interpret and implement. An empirical illustration is given for Japanese demand for nondurable goods and services. The results show that the new model is preferable to the nested models in terms of relative explanatory power and producing reasonable elasticities.     

Nonlinear income effects in random utility models: revisiting the accuracy of the representative consumer approximation

This article investigates the implications of nonlinear income effects in Random Utility Models (RUM) for measuring general equilibrium welfare impacts. A popular approach in applied welfare analysis is to approximate the expected compensating variation (cv) for an amenity change as the cv of a representative consumer whose indirect utility is given by the expected maximum utility. However, this approach can be misleading in the case of nonmarginal changes as it implies that changes in income do not affect the consumer's choice. In this case the true expected cv can be obtained via simulation. Empirical applications to recreational demand find that the bias from the representative approach is small. This article re-evaluates the accuracy of the representative consumer approximation in the context of measuring the general equilibrium welfare impacts of large environmental changes. Our findings suggest that, though the representative consumer approximation could lead to biased point estimates of the expected cv, this bias is overwhelmed by the size of the confidence intervals that result from the empirical estimation of household preferences.     

不同权重下政府补贴对供应链的影响

在考虑政府对制造商和消费者的补贴权重的情况下,基于博弈理论建立了制造商和零售商的决策模型,分析了不同权重下政府补贴对消费者、企业决策及其绩效的影响。数理模型推导和算例分析的结果表明:政府只对消费者补贴将导致企业提高价格,政府只对制造商补贴将导致企业降低价格;随着政府补贴的增加,消费者的实际支出价格减少,需求量、制造商利润和零售商利润均增加;政府补贴权重不同,企业决策也不同;政府补贴政策的实施对于消费者、企业和政府都是有利的;政府和企业更倾向于政府对制造商补贴,而消费者更希望政府对消费者补贴。     

An intertemporal system of dynamic consumer demand functions

This paper constructs and estimates a system of dynamic consumer demand equations under the assumption of rational expectations about anticipated human wealth. The traditional one-period budget constraint is replaced by the lifetime anticipated wealth constraint. Lagged dependent variables are rationalized by an adjustment cost argument. In the model presented, both the dynamic adjustment coefficients as well as the parameters characterizing the underlying long-run preferences are identified and can be estimated. We find that a weak version of the REH cannot be rejected on the data. In common with most empirical studies on demand behaviour we have to reject the symmetry restrictions.     

A Bayesian approach to aggregation in demand systems: smoothing with perfect substitution priors

Demand analysis requires aggregation of commodities. Some are imposed at the data collection level, leaving some for the estimation level. When data are collected, the implicit assumption underlying the aggregation is perfect substitutability: one gallon of gasoline is viewed by consumers as equivalent to another gallon; hence, the two are added together. While such aggregation can be carried out further by the data analyst, it is difficult to incorporate perfect substitutability into the estimation of direct demand systems. Perfect substitution in that context implies discontinuous demand functions, which are not nested within standard empirical demand systems. Perfect substitution is much more easily handled in a system of inverse demands, though an empirical method to impose perfect substitutability in an inverse demand system has not previously appeared in the literature. In this article, we develop such a method, which allows perfect substitutability to be imposed as a prior restriction. We use Leamer’s information contract curve as a tool to flexibly impose the substitution restriction and to investigate consistency between the data and prior. We illustrate the method with an application to inverse demands for fish in Korea.     

创新设计中消费者需求与技术特性关联矩阵构建方法研究——基于质量屋

针对消费者需求与技术特性间关系的模糊性和不确定性,提出了一种基于粗糙集确定两者间关联关系的新方法。即:以技术特性作为条件属性集,以消费者需求满意度作为决策属性集,分别构造对应的决策系统,据此建立消费者需求与技术特性之间的关联矩阵。最后,采用实例验证了该方法的有效性和实用性。     

A generalization to QUAIDS

Previous research shows that consumers’ response to price and income changes is heterogeneous. In addition, evidence from national data often does not support the classical assumption of one commodity-one price. This paper introduces a data coherent generalization to the quadratic form of the almost ideal demand system (g-QUAIDS) that incorporates the sources of heterogeneity in the demand function and allows for regional price variation. Aggregation over consumers imposes a linearization to the g-QUAIDS that requires a new set of price indices. The results from an empirical study by using microdata from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of Iran highlight the impact of aggregation bias in relation to the level of aggregation. An investigation of the predictive power of linear versus nonlinear g-QUAIDS in different aggregation levels provides practical recommendations for consumer demand analysis.     

Calibration of incomplete demand systems in quantitative analysis

An easily implemented and flexible calibration technique for partial demand systems is introduced, combining recent developments in incomplete demand systems and a set of restrictions conditioned on the available elasticity estimates. The technique accommodates various degrees of knowledge on cross-price elasticities, satisfies curvature restrictions, and allows the recovery of an exact welfare measure for policy analysis. The technique is illustrated with a partial demand system for food consumption in Korea for different states of knowledge on cross-price effects. The consumer welfare impact of food and agricultural trade liberalization is measured.     

Testing separability of public consumption in household decisions

In this paper we propose a sequential strategy, based on the microeconomic approach of the demand theory, in order to test for separability between private and public consumption. The aim of the present work is to verify, using a conditional almost ideal demand system, whether the different components of public consumption exert conditioning effects on the allocative structure of private spending. The empirical estimation of the model and the separability tests are developed for both a demand system in five functional categories of private spending, and for a demand system in six categories, where the private expenditures on those goods and services which can also be offered by the public sector are enclosed in a single functional category. The results of the separability tests, obtained using UK data for the 1974–2000 period, show that public individual consumption plays an important role in modifying consumer choices, while public collective consumption does not affect private consumption behaviours. The relationships between the different components of private spending and public individual consumption are both of substitutability and complementarity; in particular, we find that public individual consumption and the corresponding private expenditures on ‘Health, education, recreation and social protection’ are complements.