the demand for food products an analysis of interpurchase times and purchased quantities in this paper we study household purchase behaviour of storable food products an inventory model is developed in which the household chooses an optimal stock level of the product storage of the product is costly there is a fixed cost per purchase occasion and the market price is sometimes discounted because of price promotions we show that the optimal purchase policy is an s s policy the model is used to derive predictions on the correlations between interpurchase times and purchased quantities on the one hand and prices on the other these predictions are empirically verified using consumer panel data

a multivariate sample selection model estimating cigarette and alcohol demands with zero observations heckman s sample selection model is generalized to the multivariate case and used to estimate demands for cigarettes beer and wine by individuals in the united states the specification allows correlations between the error terms of multiple selection and level equations and nests the popular bivariate sample selection model and two part model empirical results suggest that the proposed model performs better than the restricted specifications differentiated effects of variables on probabilities and levels of consumption also suggest rejection of the tobit system gender differences are present and demographic variables are more important than income in determining consumption of cigarettes beer and wine

are optimal emissions really optimal four critical issues for economists in the greenhouse although the greenhouse effect is by many considered as one of the most serious environmental problems several economic studies of the greenhouse effect most notably nordhaus s dice model suggest that it is optimal to allow the emissions of greenhouse gases ghg to increase by a factor of three over the next century other studies have found that substantial reductions can be justified on economic grounds this paper explores into the reasons for these differences and identifies four partly overlapping crucial issues that have to be dealt with when analysing the economics of the greenhouse effect low probability but catastrophic events cost evaluation methods the choice of discount rate the choice of decision criterion the paper shows that i these aspects are crucial for the policy conclusions drawn from models of the economics of climate change and that ii ethical choices have to be made for each of these issues this fact needs wider recognition since economics is very often perceived as a value neutral tool that can be used to provide policy makers with optimal policies

zero expenditures and the estimation of engel curves over the brief interview periods typical of budget surveys such as the u k family expenditure survey households recorded expenditures are liable to be misleading indicators of their underlying consumption most starkly a household may not be observed to purchase commodities that it nevertheless consumes this paper considers the implications of such measurement errors for the estimation of demand systems and derives a consistent estimator for the special case of linear engel curves

demographic change tourism expenditure and life cycle behaviour abstract the paper explores how demographic changes in human populations may impact on tourism decision making of households over their life cycle by means of hurdle models the study focuses respectively on the decision to travel domestically or abroad and investigates if statistically significant differences exist as to the impact of age and cohort on the decision to travel and tourism expenditure using a vast dataset on italian household expenditures over the period 1997 2007 the empirical results show that demographic aspects do have a strong effect on the tourism behaviour of families and that cohort and age effects act differently on the decision of households to make a trip and on how much they spend on tourism age has a negative effect on the desire to travel but a positive effect on tourism expenditure on the other hand older cohorts are inclined to travel but they have a low propensity to spend on tourism relevant differences in income elasticity along the life cycle of households have also been found finally age and cohort aspects have a different effect on the decision as to whether to travel nationally or internationally

towards an operational sustainability criterion abstract this paper examines the concept of sustainability and its implications for environmental policy analysis it builds on the premise that present society holds a moral obligation to pass on a world of undiminished life opportunities to members of future generations maintaining life opportunities in turn can be achieved by maintaining or improving a diverse set of resources and capabilities that support a person s freedom to define and pursue her own conception of the good life on an operational level this framework points to the following guideline for environmental policy protecting the rights of future generations requires either the conservation of environmental resources or compensatory measures including the provision of substitute technologies that ensure the fair and proportionate sharing of net benefits over intergenerational time scales in this framework resource depletion is permissible only if with reasonable certainty it would generate a pareto improvement relative to a baseline scenario involving strict resource conservation

sustainability and the intergenerational distribution of natural resource entitlements abstract the paper describes an olg economy with a single exhaustible resource that has amenity value the steady states of this economy form a continuum implying path dependency we compare three policy scenarios first a zero extraction policy of enforced conservation that avoids environmental degradation possibly at the expense of intertemporal efficiency second a grandfathering policy that endows the present generations with all resources and that ensures efficiency but cannot prevent a persistent decline in lifetime utility from one generation to the next third a trust fund policy where future generations receive claims for the natural resource of the three only the trust fund ensures efficiency and protects welfare of all generations

the headmaster ritual the importance of management for school outcomes a the role of school principals largely resembles that of corporate managers and the leadership they provide are often viewed as a crucial component for educational success we estimate the impact of individual principals on various schooling outcomes by constructing a principal school panel data set that allows us to track individual principals as they move between schools we find that individual principals have a substantive impact on school policies working conditions and student outcomes particularly students who attend a school with a one standard deviation better principal receive on average 0 12 standard deviations higher test scores despite having very rich background information on principals it is difficult to determine which principal characteristics that form the basis for successful school management we also find a somewhat mixed picture on what management style characterizes a successful principal we further show that the scope for principal discretion for better or for worse is larger in small schools in voucher schools and in areas with more school competition

modeling food consumption decisions as a two step process this article evaluates the suitability of tobit analysis of food consumption patterns by comparing results generated by a tobit model and a modification with a two step decision process two samples of adult women were selected from the 1977 78 nationwide food consumption survey and the 1985 continuing survey of food intakes by individuals results show strong statistical evidence for questioning tobit analysis in examining food consumption decisions determinants of the decision to consume food within a particular food group often differ from the determinants of how much to consume particularly for more highly defined food groupings analysis of u s food consumption patterns and their dietary aspects with respect to consumer behavior has a long history traditionally ordinary least squares ols or some variant has been used in many studies where ols was not appropriate the tobit method was applied tobit allows for a discrete mass point for observations as well as a continuous range of values for the dependent variable this nonlinear method has yielded good results in a variety of studies e g mccracken and brandt lane and devaney and fraker this article examines the suitability of the tobit method for analysis of food consumption patterns the tobit method assumes that the decision to consume a given food item is the same as the decision about the amount of the food to consume ignoring the two step nature of the decision process may hamper understanding of true behavioral patterns lead to erroneous conclusions and generate incorrect policy recommendations this article compares results generated by a tobit model and a modification with a two step decision process in the next section the statistical methods used to test whether food consumption is a one or two step decision process are described the following sections discuss the variables and data present the results and consider the conclusions

a double hurdle approach to modelling tobacco consumption in italy this article analyzes the determinants of tobacco expenditures for a sample of italian households a box cox double hurdle model adjusted for heteroscedasticity is estimated to account for separate individual decisions concerning smoking participation and tobacco consumption and to correct for nonnormality in the bivariate distribution of the error terms nested univariate and bivariate models are found to be excessively restrictive supporting the adequacy of a generalized specification estimation results show that consumption decisions are significantly affected by income and demographic characteristics in particular income positively impacts tobacco expenditure while participation probability substantially declines as age increases the existence of significant gender differences in both smoking participation and tobacco consumption patterns is found while high education and white collar occupation reduces the likelihood to smoke and tobacco expenditure levels single adult households have a lower

estimating consumption from expenditure data abstract most studies of distributional issues have focused on the distribution of income but the income information usually available suffers from well known deficiencies this paper explores an alternative approach to distributional analysis based instead on expenditure data in many countries including the united kingdom available household budget data provides information on expenditures only over a short period the problems that consequently arise in interpreting data of this sort are emphasised a general specification for the stochastic structure of expenditure data is presented and a procedure for estimating participant households underlying consumption from their observed expenditures developed and discussed

a microeconometric model analysis of us consumer demand for alcoholic beverages this paper discusses the specification and estimation of a two stage budgeting consumer demand for alcoholic beverages using 1987 88 usda individual and household food consumption survey data the upper level first stage budgeting decision is modelled via a gamma tobit model the lower level second stage budgeting allocates alcohol expenditure via a synthetic demand system for beer spirits and wine the synthetic system is constructed via a normalized linear combination of the level rotterdam cbs and an aids equivalent model data on individual three day alcohol consumption from the individual food intake survey are used for analysis while price and household characteristics information are obtained from the house hold food intake survey the results show that some individual and household characteristic variables as well as economic variables have significant impacts on consumer demand for alcoholic beverages

demand systems estimation with microdata a censored regression approach demand systems estimation increasingly makes use of household level microdata mainly to measure the effects of demographic variables data based on these household expenditure surveys present a major estimation problem for any given household many of the goods have zero consumption implying a censored dependent variable techniques which do not take this censored dependent variable into account will yield biased results we utilize a censored regression approach that is computationally simple consistent and asymptotically efficient the results are then presented and compared with those obtained using an uncensored technique

carbon tax simulations using a household demand model abstract 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

estimating the probability of trade union membership a study of men and women in britain the paper examines the determinants of the individual decision to unionize for british employees and uses micro data from the 1975 national training survey the unionization probability is estimated separately for manual and non manual men and full time and part time women an interesting finding is that personal characteristics of both men and women generally do not affect the unionization probability this result run counter to the common perception that family responsibilities explain low female trade union density

a test of the habit formation hypothesis using household data numerous studies have confirmed the importance of habit formation as represented by a lagged dependent variable in demand analysis although all work to date has been based on aggregate time series data this study uses household level bls interview panel data to test the habit hypothesis an interrelated demand system for seventeen goods is estimated from cross section data and compared with a similar system based on time series data the results show that the habit component is significantly different between the two data sets and much smaller in the cross section data habit effects while not as large in cross section data as time series are still highly significant several explanations are offered concerning why the two sets of estimates differ copyright 1991 by mit press

public vs private demand for covering long term care expenditures this article studies the determinants of the willingness to pay wtp for long term care ltc insurance coverage two alternatives are considered one compulsory financed through taxes the other purchased on a voluntary basis and paid through a premium wtp was elicited through open ended contingent valuation within a survey conducted in the italian region emilia romagna about ltc population needs we model information on individual wtp as a two stage process where respondents first establish their interest for ltc cover then state their wtp results show that interest and wtp are influenced by different variables and that differences arise also between the wtp for public and private coverage

global warming discounting is not the issue but substitutability is the cost benefit study of nordhaus 1994 is representative for the neoclassical approach towards global warming nordhaus found that no substantial emission cuts are warranted most of his critics have concentrated on the issue of discounting and demanded that a lower discount rate should be applied these criticisms first miss the point and second lead to ethically dubious inconsistent conclusions and inefficient policy choices they miss the point because the real problem of nordhaus s methodology is his implicit underlying assumption of perfect substitutability between natural and other forms of capital given the validity of this assumption lowering the rate of discount is inconsistent with current savings behaviour is ethically dubious because future generations will be much richer than the current one anyway and is inefficient because scarce financial resources are channelled into emissions abatement that exhibits rates of return far inferior to alternative public investments any call for aggressive emission abatement must therefore directly attack the perfect substitutability assumption of neoclassical economics the real disagreement is about whether consumption growth can compensate for environmental degradation caused by global warming discounting is not the issue but substitutability is

cross section estimation of us demand for alcoholic beverage a flexible limited dependent variable model is used to examine us demand for alcoholic beverage parameterization and distributional assumptions of the double hurdle model cragg 1971 and tobit model tobin 1958 are rejected findings suggest that price income household composition and other characteristics have significant effects on alcohol consumption income and own price elasticities are significant but relatively small

unemployment and female labour supply the definition of labour force participation in the standard labour supply model stands in sharp contrast to that used in compiling the labour force statistics in the labour supply models only those supplying positive hours of work are considered to be labour force participants on the other hand participation in the labour force statistics is often defined to include not only those supplying positive hours but also those actively searching for work this paper is an attempt to reconcile these concepts by allowing unemployed workers to enter a generalisation of the standard labour supply model this turns out to be a convenient way to enter demand side factors directly into the determination of an individual s labour market position the model is applied with some success to the working behaviour of married women in the uk family expenditure survey

probability of purchase amount of purchase and the demographic incidence of the lottery tax abstract when consumers indifference curves are discontinuous at zero perhaps due to stigma or fixed costs of purchase then factors influencing the amount purchased will have a different effect on the probability of purchase estimation of the demand for a commodity like lottery tickets requires a procedure that accounts for this tobit estimation commonly used in this literature does not allow for this generalization we investigate individual lottery ticket purchases using data from a survey of households our results are quite disparate from earlier studies regarding the effects of many demographic variables on probability of play level of play and expected lottery ticket purchases and imply a different demographic incidence of the lottery tax than previous studies suggest

zero discounting can compensate future generations for climate damage abstract in cost benefit analysis of climate policy there are two main approaches to discounting each with implications conflicting with our moral intuitions thus discounted utilitarianism implies that we hardly need to protect future generations against climate change while classical utilitarianism implies that we should reduce our consumption across the board to benefit future generations the insolubility of the debate derives from the fact that both classical and discounted utilitarianism permit only a single discount rate for all consequences occurring in the same future year while our intuitions clearly do distinguish between consequences depending on whether we cause adverse effects on other people s interests and violate their rights most people share the moral intuition that we ought to refrain from harming others and ought to compensate them if we were unable to prevent harm to regain a reflective equilibrium between such deontological intuitions and economic theory there is a need to accept different discount rates for different situations a zero consumption discount rate in the case of cost benefit analysis of measures to prevent wrongful harm to future generations and standard discounting in all other cases applying a zero consumption discount rate means that future generations are automatically largely compensated for climate damage that remains unmitigated

discounting and distributional considerations in the context of global warming the economics of global warming is reviewed with special emphasis on how the cost depends on the discount rate and on how costs in poor and rich regions are aggregated into a global cost estimate both of these factors depend on the assumptions made concerning the underlying utility and welfare functions it is common to aggregate welfare gains and losses across generations and countries as if the utility of money were constant but it is not if we assume that a e co2 equivalent dlubling implies costs equal to 1 5 of the income in both high and low income countries a pure rate of time preference equal to zero and a utility function which is logarithmic in income then the marginal cost of co2 emissions is estimated at 260 590 usd ton c for a time horizon in the range 300 1000 years an estimate which is large enough to justify significant reductions of co2 emissions on purely economic grounds the estimate is approximately 50 100 times larger than the estimate made by nordhaus in his dice model and the difference is almost completely due to the choice of discount rate and the weight given to the costs in the developing world as well as a more accurate model of the carbon cycle finally the sensitivity of the marginal cost estimate with respect to several parameters is analyzed

wine consumption by us men wine consumption is modelled by focusing on three decisions the first is whether to consume any alcoholic beverages setting aside the teetotalers the second decision is whether to consume wine and the third choice is how much to consume we model these decisions using a double hurdle approach our econometric results indicate that the probability a man drinks wine increases if he is under age 65 has a high income and is a high school graduate heavy wine consumers are over age 65 are well educated physically active and have high incomes

intergenerational discounting a new intuitive approach abstract this paper proposes a new intergenerational discounting approach for computing net benefits from the use of environmental resources the approach explicitly incorporates the perspectives of both the current and future generations as argued for by pigou pigou a c 1920 the economics of welfare 1952 4th edition london macmillan and ramsey ramsey f p 1928 a mathematical theory of saving econ j 38 543 559 and required by most national and international laws related to the use of these resources an equation for use in the calculation of net discounted benefits is developed which provides a middle position whereby both the reality of personal discounting and that of social discounting are included in a social welfare function

politics economics and the regulation of direct interstate shipping in the wine industry in 1986 california passed legislation restricting the direct importation of wine from another state by california residents unless the originating state allowed direct shipment from california wineries to residents in that state the result has been a patchwork of direct shipment regulations across states we examine how various economic and public interest factors affect the likelihood that a state adopts a change in its direct shipment regulation and the nature of that change our results suggest that private and public sector economic considerations lie at the root of direct shipment regulations in the wine industry

estimating a demand system with nonnegativity constraints mexican meat demand a new information based approach for estimating systems of many equations with nonnegativity constraints is presented this approach called generalized maximum entropy gme is more practical and

determinants of dietary quality evidence from bangladesh summary whereas a large number of studies have been devoted to analyzing consumer demand for dietary quantity much less attention has been paid to the demand for dietary quality to address this gap in the literature this paper explores the determinants of dietary quality in bangladesh using data from a nationally representative household expenditure survey conducted in 2000 we find that while male education plays a positive role female education has a substantially stronger influence further female household headship is associated with lower dietary quality than male headship thus promoting female education and addressing the unique constraints faced by female headed households with respect to diet quality could be a significant policy instrument for addressing food insecurity in bangladesh

the impact of tax reforms designed to encourage healthier grain consumption in this paper we simulate the effects of tax reforms aimed at encouraging healthier grain consumption we use a rich data set on household grain consumption in 2003 from the market research institute gfk sweden combined with information on the nutritional content of the consumption we estimate behavioral parameters which are used to simulate the impact on the average household of tax reforms entailing either a subsidy on commodities particularly rich in fiber or a subsidy of the fiber density in grain products our results suggest that to direct the fiber intake towards nutritional recommendations reforms with a substantial impact on consumer prices are required regardless of the type of subsidy implemented the increase in the intake of fiber is accompanied by unwanted increases in nutrients that are often overconsumed fat salt and sugar funding the subsidies by taxing these nutrients or less healthy commodities helps to counteract such developments

research frontiers in the economics of climate change academic and policy debates over climate change risks and policies have stimulated economic research in a variety of fields in this article i briefly discuss eight overlapping areas of current research in which further effort is particularly warranted these areas include decision criteria for policy risk assessment and adaptation uncertainty and learning abatement cost and the innovation and diffusion of technology and the credibility of policies and international agreements further analysis in these areas not only will advance academic understanding but also will provide insights of considerable importance to policymakers

demand for food commodities by income groups in indonesia an analysis of the structure of demand was performed on household data classified into income groups for urban indonesia a demographically augmented linearized almost ideal demand system was used to estimate the structural parameters of the demand equations endogenous switching regression techniques yielded unbiased and consistent demand parameter estimates for the low income group which had a large number of zeros for some food groups standard seemingly unrelated equation techniques were used to estimate the demand parameters for the other income groups the results showed demands for the medium to high and high income households to be responsive to prices income and demographic variables demands for the medium to low income households were responsive to income and prices only demands for low income households were responsive to income and prices of rice and fish only

does access to formal agricultural credit depend on caste summary this paper analyzes whether caste impedes access to formal agricultural credit in india credit is provided mainly through cooperative and commercial banks using national data we find that cooperative banks discriminate against lower caste borrowers and find weak evidence that commercial banks instead bias lending in their favor in accordance with affirmative action policies we compare the organizational structures of the two types of bank and explain discrimination by cooperative banks in terms of interest group capture at the district level by showing that discrimination takes place in those districts where higher castes dominate

modelling milk purchasing behaviour with a panel data double hurdle model in this study the double hurdle model typically used in cross sectional data is extended to panel data structures the new double hurdle model can account not only for the censored nature of commodity purchases but also for the dynamics of the purchase process in this model a flexible error structure is assumed to account for state dependence and household specific heterogeneity in the empirical application for milk purchases it is found that generic advertising increases the probability of market participation as well as the purchase quantity and incidence temporal dependence is also found in both purchase and participation equations

at home consumption of cheese a purchase infrequency model for many commodities zero purchases are recorded in household budget surveys even though positive consumption occurs this may reflect a survey period that is shorter than the purchase cycle the present study estimates a purchase infrequency model for cheese using the 1987 bls consumer expenditure survey appropriateness of the tobit specification is examined along with the assumption of independence of the two stage expenditure decision process applied consumption analyses often use household budget surveys with little concern as to survey period length relative to the length over which consumption can occur many of these analyses use the tobit model to account for censoring associated with use of this type of model are underlying assumptions that first the same stochastic process affects both purchase decisions and consumption levels and second a zero value of the dependent variable represents a true comer solution however when the commodity in question has a purchase cycle longer than the survey period length a zero expenditure level may not correspond to zero consumption and the tobit specification may be inappropriate blundell and meghir p 197 as a commodity cheese may exhibit characteristics precluding use of a tobit demand model for many cheese varieties consumption may occur many weeks after purchase as evidence the 1972 and 1987 consumer expenditure surveys report that 48 and 42 of surveyed households respectively had purchased cheese over a one week survey period in contrast the 1977 usda household food consumption survey indicates over 75 of surveyed households had consumed cheese at home over a one week period this large difference

the economics of schooling production and efficiency in public schools n recent years public and professional interest in schools has been heightened by a spate of reports many of them critical of current school policy these policy documents have added to persistent and long standing concerns about the cost effectiveness and fairness of the current school structure and have made schooling once again a serious public issue as in the past however any renewed interest in education is likely to be short lived doomed to dissipate as frustration over the inability of policy to improve school practice sets in this frustration about school policy relates directly to knowledge about the educational production process and in turn to underlying research on schools although the educational process has been extensively researched clear policy prescriptions flowing from this research have been difficult to derive 2 there exists however a consistency to the research findings that does have an immediate application to school policy schools differ dramatically in quality

who emits most associations between socio economic factors and uk households home energy transport indirect and total co2 emissions abstract does the association between household characteristics and household co2 emissions differ for areas such as home energy transport and indirect emissions this question is policy relevant because distributional implications of mitigation policies may vary depending on the area of emissions that is targeted if specific types of households are likely to have higher emissions in some areas than in others so far this issue has not been examined in depth in the literature on household co2 emissions using a representative uk expenditure survey this paper compares how household characteristics like income household size education gender worklessness and rural or urban location differ in their association with all three areas as well as total emissions we find that these associations vary considerably across emission domains in particular whilst all types of emissions rise with income low income workless and elderly households are more likely to have high emissions from home energy than from other domains suggesting that they may be less affected by carbon taxes on transport or total emissions this demonstrates that fairness implications related to mitigation policies need to be examined for separate emission domains

real costs of nominal grade inflation new evidence from student course evaluations college gpas in the united states rose substantially between the 1960 s and the 2000 s over the same period study time declined by almost a half this paper uses a 12 quarter panel of course evaluations from the university of california san diego to discern whether a link between grades and effort investment holds up in a micro setting results indicate that average study time would be about 50 lower in a class in which the average expected grade was an a than in the same course taught by the same instructor in which students expected a c simultaneity suggests estimates are biased toward zero findings do not appear to be driven primarily by the individual student s expected grade but by the average expected grade of others in the class class specific characteristics that generate low expected grades appear to produce higher effort choices evidence that nominal changes in grades may lead to real changes in effort investment

an analysis of under reporting for micro data sets the misreporting or double hurdle model abstract this paper analyzes under reporting through the two extended tobit models p tobit and double hurdle models the empirical results clarify the characteristics of under reporting misreporting plays an important role in under reporting

spending on alcohol evidence from the family expenditure survey 1970 1983 this paper reports on the investigation of a model of the determination of the share of household expenditure on alcohol using fes data for the united kingdom 1970 83 i e a time series of cross sections the authors pay special attention to the occurrence of zero expenditure variations in characteristics across the population and the modeling and interpretation of the stochastic term this term is modeled using the gamma distribution replacing the normal in tobit estimated parameters indicate strong positive skewness interactions between household characteristics and expenditure propensities are important copyright 1990 by royal economic society

reassessing the government s discount rate policy in light of new theory and data in a world economy with a high degree of capital mobility abstract the paper reexamines the government s discount rate policy in the context of new evidence on international capital mobility the relationship between deficits and interest rates the relationship between consumer interest rates and the consumer s rate of time preference and intergenerational compensation it concludes that the approximate discount rate for government decisions will differ depending on the policy problem and that the government s borrowing rate is appropriate in some cases and in others the private rate should be used for long term policies the benefit cost rationale for discounting breaks down and must be reestablished on principles incorporating intergenerational equity

latent consideration sets and continuous demand systems this paper develops a theoretically consistent continuous demand system model that incorporates latent probabilistic consideration sets in contrast to existing discrete choice consideration models the proposed model is econometrically tractable with consumption data for many goods the model s empirical properties are illustrated with an 89 site recreation data set from the 1994 national survey of recreation and the environment nsre parameter and welfare estimates suggest that the latent consideration set models fit the data better and may imply a bias variance tradeoff relative to traditional models

a box cox double hurdle model of wildlife valuation the citizen s perspective abstract a stated preference approach is used to elicit the attitudes of the general public towards coyote conservation the payment vehicle is presented in a way that explicitly prompts respondents to adopt a citizen perspective rather than a consumer perspective when responding to the survey to deal with the large numbers of zero responses a box cox double hurdle specification is used to model separately individuals choices about whether to support conservation or not and their choice about the level of support the results show that simpler analyses that do not account explicitly for these two different decisions would lead to misleading conclusions in the study of nuisance wildlife the study uses primary data from prince edward island canada

functional form of engel curves for foodstuffs abstract employing individual household expenditure data for six foodstuffs we test five three parameter and four two parameter engel curves against a more general form all two parameter functions must be rejected including working s function it appears that a transformation of the budget share is in order to capture the observed curvature

spending on children direct survey evidence we present estimates of spending on children from a danish expenditure survey which asks respondents directly about allocations of expenditures to individual household members our main finding is that the average danish family allocates 44 of total assignable spending on non food non durables and services to children there is considerable variation across households more is spent on older children and expenditure on children is an increasing concave function of the number of equivalent children we find that households in which the mother has had a child by a previous partner spend 24 less on children than otherwise similar households

the welfare effects of health based food tax policy this paper examines the effects of health oriented food tax reforms on the distribution of tax payments food demand and health outcomes we offer an illustration of how one can take into account the uncertainty related to both demand estimation and health estimates and to produce confidence intervals for the overall health effects instead of only point estimates taxation of sugar could lead to a statistically significant reduction in both the incidence of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease the health effects appear to be most pronounced for low income individuals and the reforms may therefore reduce health inequality this effect undermines the traditional regressivity argument against the heavy taxation of unhealthy food

statistical models for zero expenditures in household budgets household budget surveys are an important source of data on consumer s expenditure not just for individual consumers but also for estimating national aggregates however it is a widespread finding that for certain commodities most notably tobacco and alcohol the estimate from the household survey falls short of the known consumption total calculated with some confidence from data on production imports exports and excise duties for example in the british family expenditure survey with which we shall largely be concerned total tobacco expenditure was underestimated in 1976 by 21 percent see kemsley redpath and holmes 1980 p 51 much of this understatement together with that on alcohol is thought to occur because of the design of the survey which excludes many persons amongst whom consumption of such items is thought to be atypically high e g prisoners hoteliers and their residents merchant seamen even so the possibility remains that some of the understatement is due to various types of misreporting by households included in the survey in this paper we consider a model in which the standard tobit specification tobin 1958 is supplemented by the operation of a simple binary censor the tobit model is essentially a linear regression model in which non positive observations of the dependent variable are replaced by zero we take this specification as our starting point but add a second censoring process that randomly replaces a fraction of the observations generated by the tobit model bv zeroes the combined model can serve as a representation of several types of

studying household purchasing and nonpurchasing behaviour for a frequently consumed commodity two models a panel data double hurdle model is developed to analyse household purchasing behaviour the model a time series extension of cragg s conventional double hurdle model of censored consumption is able to account not only for the censored nature of commodity purchases but also for the temporal linkage of the purchase process the panel data double hurdle model is compared with the marked renewal model that has also been used for studying household purchasing behaviour the empirical results of the double hurdle model show that for household milk purchases hurdle due to noneconomic reasons exists the results of the marked purchase renewal model showed that the duration dependence is positive both models fit the data well the views presented in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of usda ers

market dynamism and international trade a case study of mediterranean agricultural products 1850 1935 this article concentrates on analysing the rightward shifts of the demand curve for mediterranean agricultural products from 1850 to 1938 we have found that such shifts were especially conditioned by the different income elasticities of demand and by changes or otherwise in consumer preferences our aim is to show that there was an initial conditioning factor for the producer countries to take full advantage of these potential growth opportunities namely the size of such shifts

do high grading standards affect student performance abstract this paper explores the effects of high grading standards on student test performance in elementary school while high standards have been advocated by policy makers business groups and teacher unions very little is known about their effects on outcomes most of the existing research on standards is theoretical generally finding that standards have mixed effects on students however very little empirical work has to date been completed on this topic this paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of grading standards measured at the teacher level using an exceptionally rich set of data including every third fourth and fifth grader in a large school district over four years we match students test score gains and disciplinary problems to teacher level grading standards in models in which we control for student level fixed effects we find substantial evidence that higher grading standards benefit students and that the magnitudes of these effects depend on the match between the student and the classroom while dynamic selection and mean reversion complicate the estimated effects of grading standards they tend to lead to understated effects of standards

distinguishing between market participation and infrequency of purchase models of butter demand household butter expenditures are modeled by market participation and infrequency of purchase specifications the market participation model assumes that zero expenditures represent either traditional corner solutions or consumers who never use the product whereas the infrequency of purchase model assumes that zero expenditures represent either corner solutions or consumption out of storage we determine that the infrequency of purchase specification is preferred to the market participation model by applying a nonnested test based upon likelihood functions if household expenditure surveys contained information about participation and frequency of purchase a likelihood function which contained both models could be written and estimated

a double hurdle model of cigarette consumption this paper shows the importance of the double hurdle approach for modelling individuals cigarette consumption using data from the uk general household survey and argues that participation and consumption should be treated as separate individual choices the likelihood function for the full double hurdle is derived and it is shown how restrictions on the stochastic specification of the model and auxillary information which identifies ex smokers allow it to be decomposed the empirical results highlight the value of the sample separation information and the need to model starting and quitting as separate decisions

fluid milk purchases a multivariate tobit analysis we formulate an econometric model of fluid milk expenditures taking into account two important characteristics expenditures may be censored at zero and may be interdependent across milk type censoring of fluid milk expenditures is addressed with a generalized tobit system estimator interdependence of milk expenditures is examined through a likelihood function with no restrictions on elements of the engel curve error covariance matrix expenditure function parameters are estimated using a march 1991 to march 1992 u s consumer panel

transitional dynamics and economic growth in the neoclassical model neoclassical transitional dynamics are a central element of standard macroeconomic theory quantitative experiments with the fixed savings rate models of the 1960s showed lengthy transitions thus potentially rationalizing sustained differences in growth rates across countries the authors investigate quantitative transitional dynamics in various neoclassical models with intertemporally optimizing households lengthy transitions occur only with very low intertemporal substitution generally when one tries to explain sustained economic growth with transitional dynamics there are extremely counterfactual implications these result from the fact that implied marginal products are extraordinarily high in the early stages of development copyright 1993 by american economic association

what do parents value in education an empirical investigation of parents revealed preferences for teachers this paper examines revealed preferences of parents for their children s education using parent requests for individual elementary school teachers and information on teacher attributes including principal reports of teacher characteristics that are typically unobservable on average parents strongly prefer teachers whom principals describe as good at promoting student satisfaction though they also value teacher ability to raise academic achievement these aggregate effects mask striking differences across schools families in higher poverty schools strongly value student achievement and appear indifferent to the principal s report of a teacher s ability to promote student satisfaction the results are reversed for families in wealthier schools

specifications of social welfare in economic studies of climate policy overview of criteria and related policy insights an important assumption in economic studies of climate policy is the social welfare function this paper shows that applying distinct decision or social welfare criteria can result in different optimal policies of climate control notably if climate change impacts are uncertain first decision criteria in current climate economic studies are reviewed next the most important alternatives are discussed including their mathematical formalization and incorporation in economy climate models most of these alternative criteria suggest more stringent climate policies to be optimal than the standard discounted utilitarianism approach however several important welfare criteria have not or hardly seen any application in the economic analysis of climate policy we conclude that there is clear need for systematic research on this theme for which the current review provides a solid basis

investment choice and asset allocation of italian households the discrete continuous approach financial and monetary policies are considered to be effective depending on the reaction of financial markets which are increasingly populated by households in this article from intertemporal settings i derive a financial almost ideal fai demand system and i estimate it by highlighting the determinants of both limited participation to financial markets and asset substitutability complementarity in the allocating stage finally the wealth elasticities provide some further insights on the low diffusion of the newer and more complex financial instruments across italian households

intergenerational equity discounting and the role of cost benefit analysis in evaluating global climate policy when public policies with impacts far into the future are being debated the question inevitably is raised whether cost benefit analysis which discounts future costs and benefits is not biased against future generations and whether if such discounting is appropriate at all a lower rate should be used to avoid such bias the debate on global climate change is no exception this paper sketches and analyses the welfare foundations of cost benefit analysis and from this perspective analyses the role of cost benefit analysis in the climate policy debate particularly with reference to intergenerational effects the paper concludes that the cost benefit criterion cannot provide a definitive basis for deciding whether we should commit to a longer term programme to moderate climate change the issues of intergenerational equity are not that global climate change will significantly lower the gnp of future generations but relate to the possibility of science fiction like changes in the planet that will produce catastrophic effects in the future and the typical way in which the cost benefit problem is posed obscures the basic choices that we should be evaluating

what s mine is yours the influence of male and female incomes on patterns of household expenditure this paper uses microdata from the 1992 statistics canada family expenditure survey to provide evidence that male and female incomes do not always exert identical influences on household expenditures the novelty of the paper lies in its demonstration that while incomes may be pooled for some categories of consumption e g housing the income pooling hypothesis must be rejected for others we also go beyond simply rejecting the pooling hypothesis to ask how male versus female income is used our results stress the on going importance of traditional gender roles for example we find that expenditures on child care increase only with women s incomes higher male income is not associated with higher expenditure on child care even when both spouses are full time full year paid workers

joint purchasing decisions a multivariate negative binomial approach the analysis of household purchasing decisions for understanding consumption behaviour has received much attention recently mainly because of the measurement error problems that appear when using expenditure data to approximate consumption this paper discusses some empirical regularities of the household purchasing behaviour based on information about the number of purchases a household has declared having done during the survey period the concern of this paper is two fold first to show how to recover purchase frequency data from the spanish budget survey 1990 1991 second to discuss some empirical regularities of the joint purchasing decisions based on multivariate negative binomial models

information and consumer perception of the organic attribute in fresh fruits and vegetables using a double hurdle model on panel data from 3 200 danish households monthly observations for 2002 2007 we study the effects of health related media information on the demand for organic fruit and vegetables we find that negative information about pesticides contained in conventional fruit and vegetables mainly influences the probability of a consumer entering the organic market not the quantities consumed by households that are already active on the organic market positive information that links health and the consumption of organic food influences both steps of the decision process our dataset includes information about consumers media habits which allows us to disentangle the direct effects of media information from the indirect effects of this information as it is disseminated through the population our results suggest that directly obtained information is the main type of information influencing consumers while information loadings by dissemination through the population have almost no effect on consumption

a censored system of cigarette and alcohol consumption many previous studies of us cigarette and alcohol consumption have focused on single equations however the addictive nature of consumption suggests that it is more appropriate to model these products as a system we propose a two step estimation procedure and apply the procedure to a system of equations for cigarette beer and wine consumption results differ from those derived from an existing two step procedure findings suggest that consumption of cigarettes beer and wine is responsive to income changes but the elasticities are rather small personal physiques education age race ethnicity health gender employment status and regions also play significant roles in consumption

the impact of educational standards on the level and distribution of earnings the goal of this paper is to present the following finding an egalitarian policy maker might prefer higher standards than would a policy maker whose goal was to maximize the sum of earnings the result is based on the observation that if workers are differentiated with respect to ability an increase in educational standards will increase the earnings of both the most able and the least able workers the only workers whose earnings fall are those workers who after the increase fail to continue meeting the standard

limits to the value of external costs based on recent insights from the field of risk analysis this paper examines some of the difficulties encountered in attempts to characterise the environmental effects of energy options as monetary externalities more than 20 different dimensions of environmental appraisal are identified and discussed in relation to the historic literature on risk assessment and a number of recent influential environmental valuation studies a survey is conducted of the results obtained over more than a decade for the external environmental costs of electricity supply options theoretical and methodological criticisms are lent support by the finding that environmental valuation results vary over a very wide range of values yielding a variety of rank orderings for the different generating options in addition the values derived for energy externalities are found to be vulnerable to the possible influence of a price imperative the paper concludes by pointing to approaches to the social appraisal of generating technologies which offer greater transparency rigour and accessibility in addressing plural and intrinsically subjective value judgements concerning the different forms and dimensions of environmental effects

a simple model of educational standards the author models standards for educational credentials such as high school diplomas standard setters maximize their conception of social welfare knowing that utility maximizing students choose whether to meet the standard the author shows that more egalitarian policymakers set lower standards the median voter would prefer higher standards under symmetric distributions and decentralization lowers standards among identical communities optimal standards do not necessarily fall with increased student preference for leisure deterioration of nonstudent inputs to education or increased student heterogeneity superseding binary credentials by perfect information increases average achievement and social welfare for plausible degrees of heterogeneity egalitarianism and pooling under decentralization

u s cigarette consumption the case of low income women we use double hurdle or cragg models to test whether decisions about smoking participation and consumption levels are separate endogenous choices we also estimate several dominance models which assume that standard corner solutions are not applicable a complete dominance model with independence between the participation and consumption decisions is the preferred specification for our data the most important variables influencing participation are region number of children education and ethnicity region age race ethnicity and health status most affected consumption levels