Modeling quality demand with data from Household Budget Surveys: An application to meat and fish products in Greece

In this paper, we employ a method to examine the factors affecting quality choice by Greek households, using cross-sectional survey data. We illustrate the method using the raw data of the 2004/05 Household Budget Survey for meat and fish products. Quality elasticities of total food expenditure and household's age structure are derived. To cope with the zero expenditure problem, Heckman's two-step method is employed. Results generally suggest that several socio-economic factors affect quality demand for meat and fish.