SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ON DEMAND SYSTEM* AND OPTIMAL COMMODITY TAXATION

We have two major tasks in this paper. The first is to obtain a reasonable estimate of the Japanese demand system, which includes leisure, income and commodity choices. The second is to compute and evaluate the optimal tax equilibrium. The estimation result, based on the Almost Ideal Demand System, is found to be consistent with the microeconomic theory. We evaluate the optimal commodity tax structure by calculating the equilibria under lump‐sum, optimal commodity and uniform commodity taxation schemes. The deadweight losses under uniform taxation are very small, and the optimal commodity tax rates are strikingly close to uniform.     

Imposing local curvature in the QUAIDS

In this paper, we build on Ryan and Wales (1998), Moschini (1999), and Serletis and Shahmoradi (2007) and impose curvature conditions locally on the quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) model of Banks et al. (1997), an extension of the simple AIDS model of Deaton and Muellbauer (1980) that can generate quadratic Engel curves [that is, rank-three demand systems, in the terminology of Lewbel (1991)]. In doing so, we exploit the Slutsky matrix of second order derivatives of the indirect utility function.     

Model selection when estimating and predicting consumer demands using international,cross section data

This paper assesses the ability of five structural demand systems to predict demands when estimated with cross sectional data spanning countries with widely varying per capita expenditure levels. Results indicate demand systems with less restrictive income responses are superior to demand systems with more restrictive income effects. Among the least restrictive demand systems considered, An Implicitly, Directly Additive Demand System (AIDADS) and Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) seem roughly tied for best, while the Quadratic Expenditure System (QES) is a close second. Given differences in the characteristics of AIDADS and QUAIDS, it is concluded the former is better suited to instances where income exhibits wide variation and the latter to cases when prices exhibit considerable variation. First Version Received: November 2000/Final Version Received: February 2002 RID="*" ID="*"  The authors acknowledge the insightful comments of two journal referees and Baldev Raj. Bettina Aten kindly provided the data used in this study. Any errors or omissions remain the responsibility of the authors. Partial financial support of the United States Department of Agriculture – National Research Initiative Grant #97-35400-4752 and the Purdue Research Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. An expanded version of this paper is available from the authors upon request. RID="**" ID="**"  Contact author     

Generalized habit formation in an Inverse Almost Ideal Demand System: An application to meat expenditures in the U.S.

The Inverse Almost Ideal Demand System (IAIDS) model of Moschini and Vissa (1992) and Eales and Unnevehr (1994) is extended to include: (1) general, nonlinear, nonadditive habit effects; and (2) a specification for habit stock terms that allows purchases from the distant past to influence current consumption (long memory). The resulting models are compared with a linear habit effects model and a static specification. The empirical estimation is on U.S. quarterly meat expenditures (1961–1993), with each model being subjected to a battery of misspecification tests. Results of these tests, along with tests of homogeneity and symmetry restrictions, indicate clearly that the most generalized dynamic specification-the one with nonlinear, nonadditive long-memory habit stock effects-is preferred. Furthermore, persistence effects are found to be qualitatively important in that flexibility, consumption scale, and habit flexibility estimates differ, in some instances substantially, between alternative specifications.     

Decomposition analysis of consumers' demand changes: an application to Greek consumption data

A decomposition analysis for consumer demand functions is developed. Changes in Marshallian demand or expenditure shares functions over time are decomposed into a total substitution effect, an income effect, and a habit effect. This framework is applied to post-war Greek consumption patterns through a habit persistence version of the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS). It is found that for all commodity categories (i.e., food, beverages and tobacco, footwear and clothing, settling and housing, and others) the income effect was the main driving force in explaining changes in both quantity demanded and expenditure shares, followed by habit and total substitution effects.     

Measuring and testing advertising-induced rotation in the demand curve

Advertising can rotate the demand curve if it changes the dispersion of consumers’ valuations. We provide an elasticity form measure of the advertising-induced demand curve rotation in five demand models and test for its presence in the US nonalcoholic beverage market. The Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) model reveals that doubling advertising spending rotates the demand curves clockwise for milk, and coffee and tea with associated slope changes of 7 and 12%. Soft-drink advertising rotates its demand curve counterclockwise. Our policy suggestion is that milk and soft-drink firms time advertising to coincide with high-and low-price periods, respectively.     

Bargaining with revoking costs

A simple two stage bilateral bargaining game is analyzed. The players simultaneously demand shares of a unit size pie. If the demands add up to more than one, the players simultaneously choose whether to stick to their demand or accept the other?s offer. While both parties sticking to their offers leads to an impasse, accepting a lower share than the original demand is costly for each party. The set of pure strategy subgame perfect equilibria of the game is characterized for continuously differentiable payoff and cost functions, strictly increasing in the pie share and the amount conceded, respectively. Higher cost functions are shown to improve bargaining power. The limit equilibrium prediction of the model, as the cost functions are made arbitrarily high, selects a unique equilibrium in the Nash Demand Game that corresponds to a Proportional Bargaining Solution of Kalai (1977).     

A structural time series approach to modelling multiple and resurgent meat scares in Italy

This paper exploits a structural time series approach to model the time pattern of multiple and resurgent food scares and their direct and cross-product impacts on consumer response. A structural time series Almost Ideal Demand System (STS-AIDS) is embedded in a vector error correction framework to allow for dynamic effects (VEC-STS-AIDS). Italian aggregate household data on meat demand is used to assess the time-varying impact of a resurgent BSE crisis (1996 and 2000) and the 1999 Dioxin crisis. The VEC-STS-AIDS model monitors the short-run impacts and performs satisfactorily in terms of residuals diagnostics, overcoming the major problems encountered by the customary vector error correction approach.     

A simple nested test of the Almost Ideal Demand System

The MPIGLOG specification of an indirect utility function gives rise to Cooper and McLaren's (1992) Modified Almost Ideal Demand System (MAIDS) specification, which nests the Almost Ideal Demand System. Following the ‘combined’ approach outlined by Fry, Fry and McLaren (1993), we transform the deterministic equations to logratio form for estimation. This procedure not only restricts the shares implied by the model to the unit simplex, but also provides a transparent representation of the restriction implied by the Almost Ideal Demand System. We estimate MAIDS (with and without the Almost Ideal Demand System restriction imposed) using the ‘combined’ approach and proceed to test the Almost Ideal Demand System restriction.     

The demand for home-produced and imported alcoholic beverages in Cyprus: the AIDS approach

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the demand and its composition between home-produced and imported for alcoholic beverages in Cyprus. The methodological approach used is the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS), both in static and dynamic terms. Empirically, the AIDS, both in its static and dynamic version, was estimated using time-series (1970-1992) for three sets of data which include: (1) alcoholic beverages (wine-beer-other brandies) broken down between home-produced and imported (model A); (2) alcoholic beverages only without disaggregation between home-produced and imported (model B), and (3) aggregate alcoholic beverages (wine-beer-other brandies) and food (model C). Zellner's iterative estimation procedure was used for estimating the model. The empirical findings: (1) strongly support the dynamic version of the AIDS over its static alternative; and (2) provide certain guidelines concerning economic policies relating to an increase in government revenues and changing the composition between home-produced and imported consumption of alcoholic beverages. These basic findings could be considered relevant to the policy makers in the light of Cyprus' accession to the EU.     

Children as consumers: investigating child diary expenditure data

Abstract.  We investigate expenditure behaviour of school-aged children using child diary information contained in the British Family Expenditure Survey. The estimates from an Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) for child expenditure suggest that drinks, sweets, books, and toys are 'normal' goods for children, but clothes, travel, leisure and vice products are 'luxury' items with income elasticities greater than one. Being a lone-parent child and having a working mother are important factors in determining child expenditure decisions. Importantly, a higher parental budget share on any given commodity is typically associated with an increased child budget share on the same commodity.     

Factors Affecting Cigarette Demand

This paper addresses the impact of smoking restrictions in workplaces and educational establishments, cigarette price measures and various psychosocial indicators on cigarette demand, controlling for demographic and socio-economic factors. The data used for the analysis are collected via questionnaire that was administered in personal-in home interviews. A two-part model of cigarette demand [Cragg, J. G. “Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods,” Econometrica, 39, 5, 1971, pp. 829–44.] is estimated. According to the estimations, cigarette price measures do not influence cigarette demand. On the contrary, smoking restrictions in workplaces and educational establishments and most of the psychosocial variables are found to affect cigarette demand considerably.     

Convergence of consumption patterns during macroeconomic transition: A model of demand in Ireland and the OECD

This study uses country-level panel data on consumption in Ireland and seven other OECD countries to examine the evolution of Irish consumption patterns as Ireland underwent rapid macroeconomic growth. Consumption levels obviously increased due to substantially higher incomes, but it is less clear how the shares of different types of goods purchased have changed or whether Ireland's consumption mix has converged with that of other high-income countries. Rankings based on a simple distance measure of consumption similarity suggest that Ireland moved from a “low-income” pattern similar to Portugal or Greece to a “high-income” pattern like that of Canada between 1995 and 2003. Using static and dynamic Almost Ideal Demand System models, we first estimate long- and short-run Irish price and income elasticities for nine categories of commodities between 1976 and 2003. These results provide evidence of substantial habit formation in aggregate consumption. We then estimate a long-run cross-country model covering six aggregate commodity groups between 1975 and 2003. The analysis shows that Ireland's demand parameters remain more similar to those of Greece than to higher-income OECD countries in the sample. Although Ireland has overtaken most other OECD countries in per capita income, it is still converging to a higher-income consumption pattern. We foresee further convergence of Irish expenditure patterns towards a pattern typical of high-income countries.     

On microfoundations of the city

This paper considers the spatial structure of a city subject to final demand and vertical linkages. Individuals consume differentiated goods (or services) and firms purchase differentiated inputs (or services) in product (or service) markets where firms compete under monopolistic competition. Workers rent their residential lots in an urban land market and contribute to the production of differentiated goods and inputs. We show that firms and workers co-agglomerate and endogenously form a city. We characterize and discuss the spatial distribution of firms and consumers in such cities on one- and two-dimensional spaces. We show that final demand and vertical linkages raise the urban density and reduce the city spread.     

Time-varying parameters in the almost ideal demand system and the Rotterdam model: will the best specification please stand up?

This article assesses the ability of the Rotterdam Model (RM) and of three versions of the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) to recover the time-varying elasticities of a true demand system and to satisfy theoretical regularity. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the RM performs better than the linear-approximate AIDS at recovering the signs of all the time-varying elasticities. More importantly, the RM has the ability to track the paths of time-varying income elasticities, even when the true values are very high. The linear-approximate AIDS, not only performs poorly at recovering the time-varying elasticities but also badly approximates the nonlinear AIDS.     

Consumption and leisure in Austria

Böhm's (1980) data set on consumption and leisure in Austria is used to estimate the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) of Deaton and Muellbauer (1980). Average income elasticities and average Slutzky price elasticities are calculated and the patterns of consumption and leisure in Austria are described.     

Consumer allocation models: Choice of functional form

The functional form of consumer allocation models should be able to satisfy theoretical properties derived from the theory of consumer demand. The paper sketches four approaches that meet this condition. Of course, also empirical performance matters. Next to naive goodness-of-fit comparison, non-nested hypothesis testing can be employed. The latter technique is applied to a comparison of four versions of differential demand systems: the Rotterdam system, a version of the Almost Ideal Demand (AID) system, the CBS system and the NBR system. These systems are artificially nested in a more general model using scalar weights in contrast to Barten and McAleer (1991) who use matrix weights for this purpose. Annual data over the period 1921–1981 for The Netherlands for four major groups of consumer expenditure have been used for the empirical application. The CBS system dominates the others.     

Testable implications of transferable utility

Although the Transferable Utility (TU) assumption is widely used in micro theory, little is known about its testable consequences, and in particular how one can, from the observation of a group's demand, test whether the TU assumption is satisfied within this group. We derive a set of necessary and sufficient conditions on demand that characterize the TU context. The conditions are of two types. First, TU requires the group to behave as a single decision maker. Secondly, within the unitary setting, the representative utility generated by a TU framework must be of the Generalized Quasi-Linear (GQL) form. We derive testable properties of the demand function that fully characterize GQL utilities. These additional restrictions only involve specific prices - namely, those of the goods that are publicly consumed within the group.     

Regional consumption of antibiotics: A demand system approach

Through this paper, we have attempted to model the demand for different classes of antibiotics used for respiratory infections in outpatient care in Switzerland using a spatial version of the linear approximate Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) model. This model takes spatial dependency into account by means of spatial lags of antibiotic budget shares. We control for the health status of patients and the potential harmful effects of antibiotic use in terms of bacterial resistance. Elasticities to socioeconomic determinants of consumption and own- and cross-price elasticities between different groups of antibiotic have also been computed in this paper. Significant cross-price elasticities are found between newer or more expensive generations and older or less expensive generations of antibiotics.