Evidence of a stock market wealth effect using household level data

Using the household level data of urban households in Korea, this paper presents evidence for a statistically significant stock market wealth effect for the highest income bracket households who typically hold a large share of corporate stock.     

Demand for international telephone traffic in Spain: An econometric study using provincial panel data

In this study we model the demand for outgoing international telephone traffic in Spain. We make use of a standard theoretical framework that incorporates the special characteristics of this type of telephone service. Consequently, equations for real expenditure per line and for the number of international calls per line are estimated.We use annual data for the 50 Spanish provinces for the period 1985–1989, and employ appropriate panel data techniques. The selected equations (one for expenditure per line in international traffic and another for the number of international calls per line) pass a battery of diagnostics. We conclude that this type of traffic, whether measured by expenditure per line or by the number of international calls per line, presents both high income and price elasticities. Moreover we find that price and income affect both the number of calls and their average duration.Likewise, we find a significant increase in social welfare when a tariff rebalancing that maintains the profit of the operating company is carried out.     

A panel data model for subjective information on household income growth

Subjective expectations about future income changes are analyzed, using household panel data. The models used are extensions of existing binary choice panel data models to the case of ordered response. We consider static models with random and fixed individual effects. We also look at a dynamic random effects model which includes a measure for permanent and transitory income. We find that income change expectations strongly depend on realized income changes in the past: those whose income fell, are more pessimistic than others, while those whose income rose are more optimistic. Expected income changes are also significantly affected by employment status, family composition, permanent income, and past expectations. Expectations are then compared to the head of household’s ex post perception of the realized income change for the same period. The main finding is that rational expectations are rejected, and that in particular, households whose income has decreased in the past underestimate their future income growth.     

Demand for cigarettes in Turkey: an application of count data models

Household cigarette demand in Turkey is examined using the zero-inflated negative binomial model to account for a large portion of households not reporting cigarette smoking or purchase and estimated using the data from the national household survey implemented in 2003. Data were divided into two main groups: families with and without teenagers. Results identify relevant household head and household characteristics needed to develop effective public policy to prevent the decision to begin to smoke and to reduce cigarette purchase to lower the future growth of government healthcare expenditures. Specifically, healthcare expenditure share, income, and cigarette-price elasticities are relevant in lowering cigarette purchases. The calculated price elasticities for cigarette demand falls within the range determined by studies conducted for developed countries including the member states of the European Union. An estimate of the effect of an increase in the excise tax lowering demand is provided.     

Social Affiliation and the Demand for Health Services: Caste and Child Health in South India

This paper assesses the role of social affiliation, measured by caste, in shaping investments in child health. The special setting that we have chosen for the analysis - tea estates in the South Indian High Range - allows us to control nonparametrically for differences in income, access to health services, and patterns of morbidity across low caste and high caste households. In this controlled setting, low caste households spend more on their children's health than high caste households, reversing the pattern we would expect to find elsewhere in India. Moreover, health expenditures do not vary by gender within either caste group, in contrast once again with the male preference documented throughout the country. A simple explanation, based on differences in the returns to human capital across castes in the tea estates is proposed to explain these striking results.     

Carbon tax simulations using a household demand model

The main objective of this paper is to analyse consumer response and welfare effects due to changes in energy or environmental policy. To achieve this objective we formulate and estimate an econometric model for non-durable consumer demand in Sweden that utilises micro- and macro-data. In the simulations, we consider two revenue neutral scenarios that both imply a doubling of the CO₂ tax; one that returns the revenues in the form of a lower VAT and one that subsidise public transport. One conclusion from the simulations is that the CO₂ tax has regional distribution effects, in the sense that household living in sparsely populated areas carry a larger share of the tax burden.     

Modeling household fertility decisions: estimation and testing of censored regression models for count data

"This paper adds to the recent body of research on fertility by estimating and testing censored Poisson regression models and censored negative binomial regression models of household fertility decisions. A novel feature of this study is that in each case the censoring threshold varies from individual to individual. Also, a Lagrange multiplier or score test is used to investigate overdispersion. In these regression models the dependent variable is the number of children. In this situation, censored Poisson regression models and censored negative binomial regression models have statistical advantages over OLS, uncensored Poisson regression models, and uncensored negative binomial regression models. The censored models employed in this study are estimated using panel data collected from the Consumer Expenditure Survey compiled by the [U.S.] Bureau of Labor Statistics."     

Quantile Regression Analysis of Predictors of Calorie Demand in India: An Implication for Sustainable Development Goals

This study examined predictors of households’ calorie demand using consumer expenditure survey data during the time frame of millennium development goals. It draws suggestions for achieving sustainable development goals to eliminate calorie-poverty. We used the log of per-capita calorie intake as the calorie demand. Endogeneity corrected quantile regression was applied to examine the distributional effect of predictors. Findings revealed calorie-monthly per-capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) elasticities were positively statistically significant across quantiles in rural-and urban-areas, but, contrary to traditional wisdom, elasticities are lower for calorie-poor than calorie-rich households. Dietary diversification of food items, relative food price, and share of medical-and education-expenditure were the main adverse drivers of calorie demand. Our results are robust to the under-reporting and measurement error. The policy implications are: (a) only focusing on pro-poor income enhancing strategies will not able to reduce calorie deprivation, it should be backed by imparting awareness about food choice and nutritional value of low price food items, (b) to implement necessary policy to maintain stable food inflation and effectively targeted food subsidy for calorie poor, (c) to adopt forward-looking medical-and education-policy such as free health and education facilities to all by enhancing public spending to revive the quality of public hospitals and educational institutions.

     

Convergence in household credit demand across euro area countries: evidence from panel data

This article contributes to the literature on the convergence of financial systems in the euro area by estimating household credit demand in individual countries. Using the ARDL framework advocated notably by Pesaran et al. (1999 Pesaran, MH, Shin, Y and Smith, RP. 1999. Pooled mean group estimation of dynamic heterogeneous panels. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 94: 621–34. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the article provides evidence on the convergence of long-run credit demand determinants (interest rates, investment and house prices) in the largest euro area countries, while short run-dynamics remain heterogenous across countries. The article also demonstrates that the equation uncovers demand rather than supply behaviour.     

Motives for household private transfers in Burkina Faso

Resource transfers among households have received considerable interest among economists in recent years. Two of the main reasons for the surge of interest in household transfers are the information on human nature conveyed by transfer behavior and the implication on income redistribution policy that private transfer might have. Empirical studies, however, provide mixed results on transfer behavior. This is because previous inquiries were confronted with several estimation issues and have focused on data from developed countries where private transfers are already small. This paper contributes to the literature on transfer behavior by using a multifaceted econometric approach to examine the motives of household transfers in Burkina, a low-income country with a well-documented tradition of gift exchanges. The findings suggest that risk sharing is not central to transfers. Altruistic transfers are apparent for the middle income class, but not at low income level. The evidence implies that crowding out may be minimal at low income level, suggesting that public transfers targeting poor households may be effective.     

Privatization, water access and affordability: Evidence from Malaysian household expenditure data

The aim of this paper is to examine empirically the impact of privatization on water access and affordability in Malaysia using household expenditure data. The development of water sector in Malaysia in terms of coverage has been fairly uneven. Some states have privatized their water supply sector while others have not. The overall finding of this study is that the impact of privatization on access and affordability in the Malaysian water supply sector is ambiguous. Privatization does not seem to have improved access to treated water from network in Malaysia. A likely explanation of this is the role played by the government in the sector in terms of tariff regulation and universal service provision. Furthermore, privatization does not seem to have adversely affected affordability in the sector. In addition to political intervention in tariff regulation, this could be due to the government maintaining a significant stake in privatized water companies.     

Effects of income distribution in an inverse demand system: evidence from Chinese household survey data

This study provides an empirical analysis of the impact of changes in income distribution on food demand in China using data from China Health and Nutrition Survey. A new parametric form of an inverse demand system is introduced and estimated taking into account reported zero consumption. This new form is a natural extension of recent works that accommodate the incorporation of income distribution into the system and imposition of global regularity conditions in estimation. Our results generally indicate that the distribution of households across income groups is important in determining food demand in China and that a movement towards a more equal income distribution in China will stimulate the demand for vegetable, fruit, fish and eggs.     

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.

     

The household demand for energy and fuels in OECD countries

This paper estimates the household demand for energy and fuels. The linear expenditure model is estimated using data from eight OECD countries over a period of sixteen years. The basic similarities in household demand for fuels and the differences among OECD countries are discussed. The results indicate that household demand for energy is highly income dependent. With regard to four basic fuels, the income and price elasticities for gasoline and gas are higher than for either coal or oil. The demand patterns are shown to differ significantly among groups of OECD countries. Coal has been gradually replaced by oil as the major household fuel in OECD countries, whereas the demand pattern for gas has changed only a little during the fifties and sixties.     

A framework for agro-terrorism intentions detection using overt data sources

Agro-terrorism is a hostile attack, towards an agricultural environment, including infrastructures and processes, in order to significantly damage national and international political interests. This article provides a framework for reducing agro-terrorism-related risks by either means of foresight (prevention) or early detection of exotic/foreign pathogenic agents and their dispersion patterns. It focuses on intention detection using overt data sources on the World Wide Web as they relate to agro-terrorism threats. The paper defines agro-terrorism, examines data characteristics, identifies weaknesses among the intelligence community that must be addressed, then integrates the classical intelligence cycle for early detection that may lead to prevention of such acts.     

中国货币需求研究

本文对中国货币需求的基本状况和特征进行分析,借鉴经典理论方法分析了货币需求的主要影响因素。在此基础上,构建货币需求函数,以1992~2006年统计数据为基础,运用实证方法得到货币需求与其影响因素的关系。实证研究结果揭示了货币需求除受收入影响外,还受通货膨胀率、风险资产价格影响。因此,要关注货币需求变化的长期趋势,提高货币政策预见性;积极推进利率市场化改革,提高货币政策有效性;货币政策决策应关注资产价格及新的制度因素等。     

Child survival,height for age and household characteristics in Brazil

"The impact of household characteristics on child survival and height, conditional on age, is examined using household survey data from Brazil. Parental education is found to have a very strong positive effect on both outcomes and this is robust to the inclusion of household income and also parental heights, which partly proxy for unobserved family background characteristics. We find that income effects are significant and positive for child survival but insignificant for for child height although the latter depends on identification assumptions. Parental height has a large positive impact on child height and on survival rates even after controlling for all other observable characteristics."     

The Demand for Constitutional Law

A growing concern in transition economies is the gap between the law on the books and the law in practice. The existence of such a gap has long been recognized even in countries with a long legal tradition and where, by and large, the formal law seems to be observed. In transition economies as well as in many emerging markets and developing countries, this gap appears to be especially pronounced. This paper argues that an explanation for this phenomenon can be found in the process of law development in these countries. They have extensively imported law from other countries in an attempt to stage a catch-up in legal development. This was facilitated by foreign legal advisors preaching the existence and transferability of best practice in other parts of the world. The missing link in this equation has been the demand for law. This paper seeks to explain the meaning of the demand for law in the context of evolving Russian constitutional law drawing extensively from research on legal transplants and the lack of demand for law in other areas of the law.     

Multi-horizon inflation forecasts using disaggregated data

In this paper we use multi-horizon evaluation techniques to produce monthly inflation forecasts for up to twelve months ahead. The forecasts are based on individual seasonal time series models that consider both, deterministic and stochastic seasonality, and on disaggregated Consumer Price Index (CPI) data. After selecting the best forecasting model for each index, we compare the individual forecasts to forecasts produced using two methods that aggregate hierarchical time series, the bottom-up method and an optimal combination approach. Applying these techniques to 16 indices of the Mexican CPI, we find that the best forecasts for headline inflation are able to compete with those taken from surveys of experts.