analyzing nutritional impacts of policies an empirical study for malawi summary widespread malnutrition in developing countries calls for appropriate strategies presupposing good knowledge about nutritional impacts of policies little previous work has been carried out in this direction especially with respect to micronutrients we use representative household data from malawi and develop a demand systems approach to estimate income and price elasticities of food demand and nutrient consumption these estimates are applied for policy simulations given multiple nutritional deficiencies income related policies are better suited than price policies to improve nutrition while consumer price subsidies for maize improve calorie and mineral consumption they can worsen vitamin consumption in urban areas

the impact of survey characteristics on the measurement of food consumption abstract survey characteristics affect the quality of the measurement of food consumption within households thus it is important to identify best practices for designing surveys that collect food data this paper analyses the impact of survey characteristics on the measurement of food consumption from a sample of 81 national surveys results highlight regularities that can inform best practices in designing surveys and promoting the use of the data for multiple purposes surveys focused on food acquisition collect higher food quantities compared to those that target food consumption surveys based on recall interviews collect higher food quantities compared to those based on diaries but the difference decreases with long reference periods the use of standard units of measurement as well as the consideration of partakers in meals and of seasonality generates significant differences in the survey results the impact of the different survey characteristics carries substantive implications when food consumption data are employed for assessing food security conditions the results are part of a wider work program aimed at improving the quality of household survey data more evidence is needed ideally through coordinated sets of analyses and experiments in different contexts additionally survey characteristics must be complemented by effective field work in order to generate high quality data towards this end statistical capacity development is crucial to promote better data and more evidence based decision making

a globally flexible almost ideal demand system the almost ideal demand system is combined with the fourier expenditure system subject to the assumption that preferences are of the price independent generalized logarithmic class the resulting demand system has the desirable features of each of its components aggregate demand equations are consistent with preferences of a representative consumer and consistent estimates of elasticities are obtained for all observed prices application of the new demand system to u s consumption of meats and fish reveals that it fits the data well and that the restriction to the usual specification is rejected

how reliable are household expenditures as a proxy for permanent income implications for the income nutrition relationship using short run expenditures from household surveys as a proxy may create attenuated estimates of the impact of permanent income on economic outcomes we use repeated observations to calculate reliability ratios and estimate errors in variables regressions of the impact of income on nutrition we find significant responses to income in contrast to previous influential studies

does survey recall error explain the deaton paxson puzzle using recall and diary food expenditure data from canada we compare estimates of the household size elasticity of per capita food expenditure in contrast to gibson 2002 we find negative elasticities in both recall and diary data this in turn means we find evidence of the deaton paxson puzzle in both diary and recall data recall error cannot be the sole explanation of the puzzle

the demand for beer wine and spirits a survey of the literature the demand for alcohol literature is vast and much conflicting information about the nature of the demand for alcoholic beverages has been published this paper presents a survey of the literature and then uses the technique of meta regression analysis to establish insights into the nature of the demand for beer wine and spirits unlike previous meta studies of the demand for alcoholic beverages this study adjusts for the precision of each elasticity estimate the analysis presented suggests reported elasticity estimates will be influenced by such factors as estimation technique data frequency and time period under consideration with respect to time the findings suggest that the demand for alcoholic beverages has become less inelastic since the mid 1950s and that the income elasticity has been falling since the mid 1960s the analysis also found support for the idea that alcohol as a commodity group is a necessity and that consumers respond to price discounting with inventory behaviour rather than true substitution behaviour little support is found for the idea that the demand for alcoholic beverages varies fundamentally across most countries although wine may be an exception language en

the great indian calorie debate explaining rising undernourishment during india s rapid economic growth abstract the prevalence of undernourishment in india the percent of people consuming insufficient calories to meet their energy requirements has been rising steadily since the mid 1980s paradoxically this period has been one of robust poverty reduction and rapid economic growth the reasons for the apparent reductions in calorie consumption underlying increased undernourishment have been the subject of intense debate both within india and internationally this paper critically reviews this debate finding that is has taken place outside of the context of india s recent nutrition and epidemiological transitions which appear to have brought with them increased not decreased food consumption the debate has also taken place under the unchallenged assumption that the data on which the conflicting trends are based collected as part of the country s household consumption and expenditure surveys hcess are reliable the paper provides supporting literature and empirical evidence that a probable key source of the calorie decline is incomplete collection of data on food consumed away from peoples homes which is widespread and rapidly increasing complete measurement of this food source in the hcess of all developing countries is vital for accurate measurement of both undernourishment and poverty and for resolving the indian calorie debate

more evidence on nutrition demand income seems overrated and women s schooling underemphasized abstract malnutrition is widespread in the developing world controversy continues concerning the roles of income household size and women s schooling on nutrient demand empirical estimates for nicaragua suggest that income elasticities are small and inversely associated with income levels there are some economies of scale in household size the elasticity for women s schooling is higher than those for income or household size and women s backgrounds are important the results cast doubt on the strong emphasis the world bank and others have placed on income and suggest that schooling may be working through tastes not only through productivity

methods of household consumption measurement through surveys experimental results from tanzania consumption expenditure has long been the preferred measure of household living standards however accurate measurement is a challenge and household expenditure surveys vary widely across many dimensions including the level of reporting the length of the reference period and the degree of commodity detail these variations occur both across countries and also over time within countries there is little current understanding of the implications of such changes for spatially and temporally consistent measurement of household consumption and poverty a field experiment in tanzania tests eight alternative methods to measure household consumption on a sample of 4 000 households there are significant differences between consumption reported by the benchmark personal diary and other diary and recall formats under reporting is particularly relevant in illiterate households and for urban respondents completing household diaries recall modules measure lower consumption than a personal diary with larger gaps among poorer households and households with more adult members variations in reporting accuracy by household characteristics are also discussed and differences in measured poverty as a result of survey design are explored the study concludes with recommendations for methods of survey based consumption measurement in low income countries

weak separability and the estimation of elasticities in multistage demand systems the necessary conditions for multistage budgeting to be at least approximately justified are reviewed and the plausibility of these assumptions i e weak separability and low variability of price indices with utility level are discussed using no further assumptions simple relationships between expenditure and price elasticities in different budgeting levels are derived these results are applied to a three stage model for swedish food consumption and it is shown that the assumptions are not inappropriate restricting the analysis to the last stage of a multistage budgeting process is also shown to lead to considerable errors which could well have policy consequences

advertising and food drink and tobacco consumption in the united kingdom a dynamic demand system this paper tests for the influence of advertising on the inter product distribution of consumer demand for non durable goods and services in the uk 1963 1996 the long run demand for seven categories of non durable products is modelled through an advertising augmented version of the almost ideal demand system aids which is incorporated into an error correction model to allow for short run dynamic adjustments to long run equilibrium positions model estimates confirm that the restrictions of price homogeneity and symmetry appear to be consistent with the data yield measures of the various types of demand elasticity that are in general plausible confirm the strong influence of prices on the allocation of consumer expenditure but find little evidence to support the hypothesis that advertising has the power to effect marked changes in the inter product pattern of consumer demand in the uk

a food demand system based on demand for characteristics if there is curvature in the slutsky matrix what do the curves look like and why abstract a food demand system is proposed based on demand for energy variety and tastes of foods by specifying utility as an explicit function of these characteristics the entire matrix of demand elasticities can be derived for n foods and one non food from prior specification of just four elasticities while avoiding any assumption of separability between foods this framework can explain why poorest groups often are most price responsive but also can account for highest price responsiveness by middle income groups the system is applied to published food consumption data for urban and rural populations in pakistan elasticities are compared with those obtained in a published pakistan study applying an almost ideal demand system aids

advertising and the us market demand for beer the us per capita market demand for beer is empirically estimated to determine the effect of advertising on the demand for beer the empirical results indicate that the most important determinants of demand are the price of beer the price of substitutes demographic factors and a light beer dummy variable the positive effects of income and lagged consumption appear to be small although many have argued that advertising promotes beer consumption the empirical results of this study do not support this hypothesis

alcohol control laws and the consumption of distilled spirits and beer this article tests the social marketing effectiveness of alcohol control laws designed to reduce the consumption of alcoholic beverages the study uses state level historical data to estimate the demand for distilled spirits and beer using economic sociodemographic and control law explanatory variables spirits and beer consumption are found to react differently to changes in economic sociodemographic and regulatory variables these differences suggest a consumer and product segment based approach to alcohol control laws or social marketing that emphasizes measures directed at youths for beer and at price for spirits

decomposing response errors in food consumption measurement implications for survey design from a survey experiment in tanzania there is wide variation in how consumption is measured in household surveys both across countries and over time this variation may confound welfare comparisons in part because these alternative survey designs produce consumption estimates that are differentially influenced by contrasting types of survey response error although previous studies have documented the extent of net error in alternative survey designs little is known about the relative influence of the different response errors that underpin a survey estimate this study leverages a recent randomized food consumption survey experiment in tanzania to shed light on the relative influence of these various error types the observed deviation of measured household consumption from a benchmark is decomposed into item specific consumption incidence and consumption value so as to investigate effects related to a the omission of any consumption and then b the error in value reporting conditional on positive consumption the results show that various survey designs exhibit widely differing error decompositions and hence a simple summary comparison of the total recorded consumption across surveys will obscure specific error patterns and inhibit the lessons for improved consumption survey design in light of these findings the relative performance of common survey designs is discussed and design lessons are drawn to enhance the accuracy of item specific consumption reporting and consequently the measures of total household food consumption

units of measurement and the stone index in demand system estimation the stone index typically used in estimating linear almost ideal demand systems is not invariant to changes in units of measurement which may seriously affect the approximation properties of the model a modification to the stone index or use of a regular price index instead are both desirable practices in estimating linear ai models

the price of redemption sin penance and marginal deterrence abstract the threat of loss of the afterlife as punishment for sin is a fundamental tenet of nearly all religious traditions most religions also contain a notion of redemption or forgiveness of sin but they differ as to whether or not redemption requires atonement or penance the possibility of redemption allows sinners to be rehabilitated but in so doing potentially undermines the incentive for them to refrain from sin in the first place we show that a properly calibrated form of penance as the price of redemption can both deter people from committing early sins and provide an incentive for those who have previously sinned to refrain from committing further sins in other words it achieves marginal deterrence such a system requires strong belief in the afterlife when belief is moderate we show that a regime of free redemption may be optimal we conclude by examining the implications of the analysis for after death redemption the catholic church s practice of selling redemption indulgences and the protestant doctrine of predestination which was in part a reaction to the church s commodification of redemption

evaluating prior beliefs in a demand system the case of meat demand in canada an almost ideal demand system for meats is estimated using canadian data a bayesian approach is used to impose inequality restrictions on substitution elasticities via monte carlo integration and importance sampling in order to conform with prior beliefs about curvature and monotonicity restrictions and substitution relationships results are more consistent with the concavity and monotonicity restrictions from demand theory than with the added restriction that all meats are substitutes

engel s what a response to gan and vernon gan and vernon s comment does not resolve the puzzle that we originally posed their description of the puzzle is unclear so we start by restating it the essence of the matter is this imagine two households one of which is larger than the other for example containing the same age and sex composition of people but with twice as many of everyone imagine too that both households have the same level of per capita total household expenditure so that in the example the household with twice as many people spends twice as much in total if there are economies of scale the second household is better off while it is possible for it to maintain exactly the same expenditure pattern as the smaller household with everyone having the same of everything it can also rearrange its purchases to take advantage of the differential economies of scale in different goods because food is a normal good we would expect the larger household to spend more per capita on food this is especially so in poor countries where there are few substitutes for food so that there is limited opportunity for substituting away from food toward goods with greater economies of scale the evidence contradicts this prediction we looked at household survey data from the united states the united kingdom france taiwan thailand pakistan and south africa in all cases and with per capita expenditures held constant larger households have lower per capita food consumption and the reduction with household size is greatest in the poorest countries what do gan and vernon do they show that for the united states russia and south africa when they increase household size holding constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for housing falls more rapidly than the per capita demand for food the same is also true for various combinations of housing and other goods compared with food alone or food combined with clothing this is correct and such results can be inferred from table 5 p 920 of our original paper but these findings do not address the central puzzle which is that larger households that are more than fully compensated for their

understanding the health and nutritional status of children in ghana abstract the data set of the ghana living standards survey glss round 1 1987 1988 was utilized to analyse the principal determinants publicly and privately of health and nutrition of children under five in ghana while in most health and nutrition studies the emphasis is either on health related factors such as occurrence of illness immunization accessibility to light electricity the role of breastfeeding or on food availability and food consumption related factors in the present study an attempt has been made to incorporate both aspects simultaneously on the basis of the glss ghanaian households spend at the average approximately 60 of total expenses on food changes in relative prices of the various food commodities differently affect household food availability lowering prices of relatively cheap foods e g millet cassava tends to have a strong positive effect on total household kcal availability at the level of the household the absolute number of nondependents presumed to represent the available labour force is positively correlated with household food availability there is also a positive correlation between the mothers level of education 10 yrs of schooling and above and the nutrition level of children occurrence of illness in children could be shown to negatively affect their health and nutrition status finally a specific finding in the analysis was a rather strong negative effect of prolonged breastfeeding on the nutritional status of children among the policy recommendations emanating from the research are 1 promotion of efficient production and marketing of cassava 2 efforts to achieve slowing down of rural urban migration to prevent labour shortages in rural households 3 improving water and sanitation conditions 4 expanding immunization programmes in particular in rural areas and 5 promoting better weaning practices when children are no longer fully breastfed

demand estimation in the presence of stochastic trend and seasonality the case of meat demand in the united kingdom if budget shares have stochastic trend or seasonality or both then demand equations based on the assumption of deterministic trend and deterministic seasonality will be mis specified we test this proposition by estimating a linearized almost ideal lai demand system for meat demand in the united kingdom using harvey s structural time series methodology we demonstrate that the model specification allowing for stochastic trend and deterministic seasonality performs best in terms of diagnostic tests and goodness of fit measures it is also shown that the model with stochastic trend is better at out of sample forecasting

are estimates of calorie income fxelasticities too high a recalibration of the plausible range abstract the wide range of calorie income elasticities in the literature results in large part from the particular calorie and income variables used for estimation elasticities across four estimation techniques and four calorie income variable pairs for a sample of philippine farm households ranged from 0 03 to 0 59 estimates associated with calorie availability are biased upwards first because random errors in measuring food purchases are transmitted by construction both to calorie availability and total expenditures and second because the residual difference between family calorie intake and household calorie availability will often increase with income the calorie intake total expenditure variable pair gives the preferred elasticity estimate in the 0 08 0 14 range

poverty and household size the widely held view that larger families tend to be poorer in developing countries has influenced research and policy the scope for size economies in consumption cautions against this view we find that the correlation between poverty and size vanishes in pakistan when the size elasticity of the cost of living is about 0 6 this turns out to be the elasticity implied by a modified version of the food share method of setting scales by contrast some measures of child nutritional status indicate an elasticity of unity consideration of the weight attached to child versus adult welfare may help resolve the non robustness of demographic profiles of poverty excerpt

politics and economics in weak and strong states abstract while much research in political economy points out the benefits of limited government political scientists have long emphasized the problems created in many less developed nations by weak states which lack the power to tax and regulate the economy and to withstand the political and social challenges from non state actors i construct a model in which the state apparatus is controlled by a self interested ruler who tries to divert resources for his own consumption but who can also invest in socially productive public goods both weak and strong states create distortions when the state is excessively strong the ruler imposes such high taxes that economic activity is stifled when the state is excessively weak the ruler anticipates that he will not be able to extract rents in the future and underinvests in public goods i show that the same conclusion applies in the analysis of both the economic power of the state i e its ability to raise taxes and its political power i e its ability to remain entrenched from the citizens i also discuss how under certain circumstances a different type of equilibrium which i refer to as consensually strong state equilibrium can emerge whereby the state is politically weak but is allowed to impose high taxes as long as a sufficient fraction of the proceeds are invested in public goods the consensually strong state might best correspond to the state in oecd countries where taxes are high despite significant control by the society over the government

measuring consumer expenditures with payment diaries payment diaries measure consumer expenditures by tracking authorization of payments by instrument cash check debit or credit card etc three notable results emerge from comparing the 2012 diary of consumer payment choice dcpc to other estimates of consumer expenditures 1 dcpc payments are 75 higher than consumer expenditure survey estimates 2 dcpc consumption estimates are 17 higher than comparable personal consumption expenditure estimates and 3 dcpc payments roughly equal comparably adjusted national income and product accounts personal disposable income the dcpc s relative success stems from measuring expenditures aggregated into lumpy payments shopping baskets relatively low respondent burden and effective random sampling jel e21 d12 d14

the effect of income on demand for food in poor countries are our food consumption databases giving us reliable estimates abstract cross section estimates of income elasticities for food staples in the aggregate based on quantity information from household food expenditure surveys are often in the 0 3 0 6 range it is shown that differences in per capita calorie intakes across income groups implied by these income elasticities are grossly inconsistent with observed differences in bodyweights moreover time series data frequently indicate that national per capita consumption of food staples in the aggregate remains constant even as per capita gross national product rises substantially cross section income elasticity estimates are biased upwards due to the failure of food expenditure surveys to undertake an accurate accounting of food transfers from high to low income groups biases which are not generated by survey techniques which record food intakes directly

examining the relationship between the use of supermarkets and over nutrition in indonesia this study examines the relationship between the use of modern food retailers and health outcomes using data from a survey of 1 180 urban households in indonesia the dependent variables include adult and child body mass index and the share of individuals overweight and obese after controlling for individual and household characteristics and using standard and lewbel instrumental variable approaches to control for unobservable characteristics we do not find a statistically significant relationship between use of supermarkets and adult nutrition measures on the other hand there is mixed evidence for a negative effect of supermarkets on child nutrition particularly for those in high income households

household income women s income share and food calorie intake in south western nigeria abstract current debates on the nature of intra household preferences and resource control raises the question of how intra household redistribution of income from men and women compares with increasing total household income as strategies for increasing calorie intake among low income households i estimate calorie income and calorie women s income share elasticities for a random sample of low income households from the rural areas of south western nigeria i find that calorie income elasticity is positive and small 0 194 but four times as large as calorie women s income share elasticity suggesting that calorie intake is affected more by total disposable income than by its distribution pattern second i find a small and negative effect of women s income share on per caput calorie intake 0 04 which is a rejection of the hypothesis that increases in women s share of income will increase calorie intake and suggests that intra household income re distribution from men to women may not be an effective policy for increasing food calorie intake among households in the study area

law state power and taxation in islamic history abstract the ruler s power varied greatly in islamic history over time and space we explain these variations through a political economy approach to public finance identifying factors affecting economic power and its constraints an influential interest group capable of affecting the ruler s power was the legal community ulam this community could increase the ruler s ability to extract a surplus from the citizenry by conferring legitimacy thereby lowering the cost of collecting taxes it could also limit power through legal constraints on taxation we show how changes in legitimacy and legal constraints affected the economic power of rulers in representative episodes of islamic history and identify general trends and dynamic processes underlying the relationship between the state and the legal community

data gaps data incomparability and data imputation a review of poverty measurement methods for data scarce environments this paper reviews methods that have been employed to estimate poverty in contexts where household consumption data are unavailable or missing these contexts range from completely missing and partially missing consumption data in cross sectional household surveys to missing panel household data the paper focuses on methods that aim to compare trends and dynamic patterns of poverty outcomes over time it presents the various methods under a common framework with pedagogical discussion on the intuition empirical illustrations are provided using several rounds of household survey data from vietnam furthermore the paper provides a practical guide with detailed instructions on computer programs that can be used to implement the reviewed techniques

household survey data from developing countries progress and prospects assessing the adequacy of household surveys from developing countries can only be done with reference to the purpose s the data are meant to serve we assume that the objective of data collection is to support analysis of a wide range of issues concerning household welfare and behavior especially the prevalence causes and effects of poverty in its multiple dimensions analyses that address these issues can be arrayed in two dimensions methodological complexity which ranges from simple crosstabulations to sophisticated econometric techniques and specificity of the contribution to knowledge which ranges from analysis that addresses a specific policy decision in a particular country to general contributions to knowledge on economic development or research methods a few examples illustrate this typology descriptive statistics on participation in a government program by consumption quintile region or year are methodologically simple and country policy specific compilation of such work across many countries to obtain stylized facts is also methodologically simple but contributes to general knowledge of development using a specific model of household behavior to estimate the impact of charging higher prices for publicly provided services in a particular country is methodologically complex yet countryand policy specific rigorous econometric tests of alternative models of household behavior are methodologically complex and contribute to general knowledge beyond application of the method to a particular data set we discuss the adequacy of household survey data with respect to seven criteria for some criteria the threshold for adequacy varies within the two dimensional methodologyspecificity space

reliability of recall in agricultural data despite the importance of agriculture to economic development and a vast accompanying literature on the subject little research has been done on the quality of the underlying data due to survey logistics agricultural data are usually collected by asking respondents to recall the details of events occurring during past agricultural seasons that took place a number of months prior to the interview this gap can lead to recall bias in reported data on agricultural activities the problem is further complicated when interviews are conducted over the course of several months thus leading to recall of variable length to test for such recall bias the length of time between harvest and interview is examined for three african countries with respect to several common agricultural input and harvest measures the analysis shows little evidence of recall bias impacting data quality there is some indication that more salient events are less subject to recall decay overall the results allay some concerns about the quality of some types of agricultural data collected through recall over lengthy periods

the demand for beer wine and spirits a systemwide analysis the systemwide approach to the analysis of consumer demand considers the multivariate structure of the problem in which the consumer allocates his income to all goods simultaneously this approach combines the theory of the consumer with empirical analysis and has enjoyed much popularity over the past decade for surveys of these developments see brown and deaton 1972 phlips 1974 powell 1974 theil 1975 76 1980 barten 1977 and theil and clements 1980 most previous applications of the systemwide approach have used national accounts commodity groups food clothing housing and so on for many business and government policy purposes however these groups are much too broad for example to analyze the effects on consumption of all but the simplest changes in indirect taxes we would need considerably more disaggregation similarly market researchers need to analyze demand at the individual product level for purposes of forecasting and formulating pricing and other policies the objective of this paper is to use the consumption of beer wine and spirits to illustrate how the approach can be apthis paper illustrates how the systemwide approach to consumer demand can be extended so that it can be applied to narrowly defined commodity groups we use the consumption of beer wine and spirits to show how the approach can be applied to estimate income and price elasticities of demand when the consumer s utility function is appropriately separable in alcoholic beverages and all other goods it is possible to confine our attention to the three beverages and ignore all other goods we use the demand model for a number of simulations designed to analyze the rapid growth of wine consumption we are indebted to john davis peter goldschmidt and kal stening for excellent research assistance to michael wohlgenant and henri theil for helpful comments and discussion and to the new south wales drug and alcohol authority for their partial financial support of this research

food counts measuring food consumption and expenditures in household consumption and expenditure surveys this special issue presents new evidence on the impact of survey design choices on the quality and availability of data collected in household consumption and expenditure surveys hces the 13 studies in this issue analyze how different survey design options affect the quality of the data being collected and the implications for statistical inference and policy analysis the studies offer practical insights into survey design for national statistical offices and survey practitioners worldwide and also provide policymakers with improved tools and a better understanding of poverty food security and nutrition for effective policymaking

how serious is the neglect of intrahousehold inequality in this report the authors develop a framework for assessing the consequences of ignoring intrahousehold inequality in the measurement and analysis of poverty and inequality they apply this framework to data for the philippines and conclude that 1 the result of neglecting intrahousehold inequality will probably be considerable understatement of the levels of poverty and inequality with the philippine data measured levels of inequality and poverty were off 30 percent as a result of ignoring intrahousehold variation and 2 patterns of inequality revealed by household level data are somewhat different from patterns revealed by individual level data but the differences seem not to be dramatic to confirm these results the exercise should be repeated with data from other countries

will developing country nutrition improve with income a case study for rural south india aggregate estimates of food expenditure are consistent with such a possibility implying income expenditure elasticities close to one however the high degree of aggregation at which such estimates are made means that the considerable increase in price per nutrient as income increases is ignored and the nutrient elasticities are therefore overstated estimates for a rural south indian sample indicate that this bias is considerable and that the true nutrient elasticities with respect to income may be close to zero

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

economies of scale household size and the demand for food household scale economies are plausibly attributed to shared household public goods that make larger households better off at the same level of per capita resources larger households should therefore have higher per capita consumption of private goods such as food provided that they do not substitute too much toward the effectively cheaper public goods the evidence shows exactly the opposite data from rich and poor countries indicate that at constant per capita total expenditure the per capita demand for food decreases with household size and that it does so most in the poorest countries where substitution should be the least

retrospectives the convergence debate between david hume and josiah tucker one of the most interesting debates in modern economics centers around the question of whether integrating economies necessarily converge in terms of per capita income and technology this debate is often believed to have been started by thorstein veblen in 1915 however this paper demonstrates that the genesis of the convergence question goes back to the scottish enlightenment and the publication of an essay by david hume in 1742 the ensuing rich country poor country debate between david hume on the convergence side and josiah tucker on the nonconvergence side represents one of the first major doctrinal debates in economics

modeling the demand for alcoholic beverages and advertising specifications in this paper the demand for beer wine spirits and soft drinks in ontario is modeled in two parts an equation is specified to endogenize group expenditures and a demand system is set up to allocate budgeted group expenditures across types of beverages advertising is allowed to influence both the level of group expenditures and its allocation three popular advertising specifications are compared using the j test and the likelihood dominance criterion even though all three specifications fitted well according to standard criteria the calculated expenditure price and advertising elasticities were sensitive to the manner with which advertising is specified this clearly highlights the need to rely on a sound criterion to identify a dominant specification from the identified dominant specification we found that advertising has very subtle effects on expenditures on alcoholic beverages group and individual beverages thus advertising is not effective in enlarging markets and this suggests that firms especially breweries use advertising to compete in zero sum market share games from a public policy perspective our results are comforting but future research should investigate whether the neutral effect of advertising on aggregated expenditures hide substantial offsetting changes in the drinking habits of individuals 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the power of the vegetable patch how home grown food helps large rural households achieve economies of scale escape poverty this paper explores how the household s capacity to grow food impacts their ability to achieve economies of scale in food consumption and how this impacts the geographic distribution of poverty across rural and urban areas an accurate understanding of consumption economies of scale is vital for comparing poverty levels across households of varying size using sri lankan data on home grown food consumption we empirically confirm that such economies of scale exist and that large households tend to consume relatively more home grown food than smaller households the magnitude of these scale economies are found to be larger than those in market purchased food but smaller than those found in housing expenditure consuming more home grown food is also found to be positively correlated with per capita calories consumed taking these effects into account in poverty estimates leads to a 15 per cent decline in the number of household who fall below the poverty line in rural regions

advertising in demand systems testing a galbraithian hypothesis in this paper we argue that the influence of advertising upon the inter product distribution of demand is a system wide phenomenon which is investigated better through a demand equation system rather than through single equation methods attention is focused upon a dynamic version of deaton muellbauer s aids model modified to include advertising terms within this framework using data on consumer s non durable expenditure in the uk we carry out a preliminary test of galbraith hypothesis that advertising may affect the composition of aggregate consumer demand

legal theories of financial development this paper describes and empirically ex amines legal theories of international differences in financial development the law and finance theory stresses that legal traditions differ in terms of 1 their emphasis on the rights of private property owners vis a vis the state and 2 their ability to adapt to changing commercia l and financial conditions so that historically determined legal traditions shape financial deve lopment today other theories reject the centrality of legal tradition in accounting for cross country differences in financial development the results are broadly consistent with legal th eories of financial development though it is difficult to identify the precise channel through which legal tradition influences financial development

short run and long run elasticities for canadian consumption of alcoholic beverages an error correction mechanism cointegration approach elasticities for beer wine and spirits are estimated for each of the provinces of canada over the period 1956 83 using unrestricted dynamic regressions modeled after the error correction mechanism alternative long run estimates are also obtained from cointegrating regressions estimates vary markedly across provinces and suggest that increases in price will reduce consumption of all beverages in the short run but in the long run no evidence is found that spirits use is price sensitive increases in the legal drinking age reduce consumption in the short run but there is little indication of a long run effect the estimated income elasticity of beer is small while the estimated income elasticities for spirits and wine are substantially larger especially in the long run coauthors are ernest h oksanen michael r veall and deborah fretz copyright 1992 by mit press

does increase in women s income relative to men s income increase food calorie intake in poor households evidence from nigeria this article addresses the important but not widely investigated question of how calorie consumption in african low income households would respond to intrahousehold redistribution of income from men to women specifically i use survey data on a sample of 480 households from semirural areas of south western nigeria to analyze the response of per capita calorie intake to changes in women s share of household income after controlling for per capita income and demographic characteristics at individual household and community levels i also examine the effect of marginal increases in household income on per capita calorie intake conditional on the income distribution factor women s share of income my results suggest that redistributing household income from men to women would neither raise per capita food energy intake nor increase the quality of food calorie source of households in rural south western nigeria i also find that while the income elasticity of quantity of calorie intake is close to zero income elasticity for quality of calorie intake is substantially positive i conclude that neither gender neutral household income increases nor redistribution of household income in favor of women would substantially motivate increased amounts of food energy intake within households in the population under study however gender neutral increase in household income is likely to substantially increase the household demand for high quality food calorie sources

impact of survey design in the estimation of habitual food consumption abstract this paper evaluates the impact of survey design on food consumption measurement using data from the mongolia household socio economic survey mses 2007 2008 we exploit the fact that the mses uses a diversified approach to collect food data by measuring consumption acquisition and stocks using both diaries and recall interviews first we estimate the effect of diary length on reporting of food consumption finding a significant decrease of reported food over time we conclude that shorter diaries would increase the quality of estimates and lower the costs of inquiry second we show that recall interviews combined with a measurement of stocks perform well in measuring household food consumption compared to diaries third we find cyclical variation in food consumption and acquisition not only between months but also within months and weeks especially for food acquisition we detect large difference within months which can lead to biased estimates of food acquisition this highlights the need for enumeration to be spread over time to overcome cyclicality on food acquisition and consumption

institutions for financial development what are they and where do they come from abstract among the fundamental causes of long run economic performance differences in institutions have received considerable attention in recent years at the same time a large body of theoretical and empirical work shows that financial development can have a big effect on economic performance this raises the more fundamental question as to why some countries have developed financial markets while others do not this paper reviews the theoretical and empirical research on this issue and shows that one of the channels whereby better institutions may have an effect on economic development is through the consolidation of larger and better financial markets an issue that is left aside in this paper relates to what regulations and policies lead to better functioning capital markets at some level one can think of regulations and policies as particular types of institutions nonetheless institutional problems are deeper causes leading to poor economic performance bad policies might simply be part of the channels through which they influence performance thus addressing the question of what determines the emergence of good institutions i e institutions that promote financial development seems particularly important recent research providing some answers to this question is also reviewed

the effects of data collection methods on calorie expenditure elasticity estimates a study from the dominican republic abstract using data from a nationally representative household survey in the dominican republic we find that the estimates of calorie expenditure elasticity vary widely depending upon the form of calorie variable used estimated elasticity is lower for calories purchased than for calories prepared for consumption in the home the divergence between the estimates increases at higher income levels there is a downward bias in the estimates obtained from purchase data due to some missing information on infrequent bulk purchases and greater memory lapse in recalling purchases we conclude that surveys undertaken to estimate calorie income elasticity should measure calories from consumption data if purchase data are used the period of recall should be flexible and defined by the respondent for each commodity so that infrequent purchases are captured survey methods should be standardized if elasticity estimates are to be compared across populations

the semiflexible almost ideal demand system abstract the concept of a semiflexible functional form is applied to the almost ideal ai demand system this yields a demand model that is more parsimonious than standard ones while preserving a degree of flexibility that satisfies the curvature property of concavity of the underlying expenditure function at least locally and that preserves the desirable properties of the ai model aggregation across consumers and nonlinearity of the engel curves the model is illustrated with an application to a relatively large demand system emphasizing food consumption

testing the barten model of economies of scale in household consumption toward resolving a paradox of deaton and paxson households enhance the welfare of constituents by sharing shelter and appliances and economizing in services such as maintenance child care and food preparation resources so conserved can be applied to more personal goods such as food clothing or beauty care economizing by households is an important factor to consider when measuring poverty and inequality in 1895 ernst engel observed that the share of food consumption in total consumption can be used to measure economic welfare across households of different sizes and incomes larger or richer households spend a smaller share of their total expenditure on food although more elaborate methods have been developed see e g a survey by browning 1992 the use of food share or the budget share of other bundles of necessities as a proxy for welfare remains a viable method for measuring poverty and studying equivalence scales see e g deaton and muellbauer 1986 lanjouw and ravallion 1995 engel s method is popular for its simplicity it has only one demand equation to be estimated with the food share of total expenditure as a dependent variable a single cross sectional survey usually provides sufficient data for the analysis and no information on prices is required

measurement error in recall surveys and the relationship between household size and food demand variation in household survey design and implementation is used to obtain evidence of nonrandom measurement error in recall surveys of household expenditure these surveys which are used especially in developing countries appear to have measurement errors in food expenditures and in food budget shares that are correlated with household size these correlated errors may be part of the explanation for a puzzling pattern of falling food demand with rising household size in poorer countries

elasticities of beer demand revisited abstract this paper uses u s aggregate beer consumption data from 1964 1992 to empirically estimate the elasticities of demand for beer however rather than assuming the behavioral parameters are time invariant we estimate a gradual switching regression model that explicitly allows the elasticities to change over time results suggest that this more general model is warranted as findings illustrate the importance of variable dynamics when evaluating the efficacy of proposed policy alternatives

saving money vs investing money do energy ratings influence consumer demand for energy efficient goods abstract the article analyses economic barriers leading to the energy efficiency gap in the market for energy using products by observing several million transactions in the uk over two years the empirical exercise estimates aids models for refrigerators washing machines tvs and light bulbs results indicate that market barriers are crucial in the demand for energy efficient options and consumer response to changes in appliance prices total expenditures and energy prices depends on the possibility of behavioural adjustments in consumption in contrast with the induced innovation hypothesis current electricity prices can fail to induce innovation because of their short term impact on disposable income while consumers invest in energy efficiency when expecting electricity prices to rise in the future

the demand for alcoholic beverages in spain the objective of this study is to analyze the main determinants of alcoholic beverages consumption at home data comes from the latest spanish household national survey which provides information on expenditure and quantities of different food products by household because households are interviewed only 1 week a large number of zeros have been recorded among the existing censured demand models the double hurdle dh model the purchase infrequency model and the tobit purchase infrequency model among others and after carrying out model selection tests the dh model has been finally estimated all expenditure elasticities are positive corresponding the highest value to spirits own price elasticities are negative and also in this case the spirits exhibit the highest value socio economic variables also play an important role in explaining consumer purchase and consumption decisions

the second engel law is it a paradox abstract the second engel law says that the engel curve for food moves out as family size increases thus showing a decrease in welfare what is puzzling though is that this regularity does not hold for equivalent income functions expressed in per capita terms deaton and paxon 1998 economies of scale household size and the demand for food journal of political economy 106 5 897 930 show that holding per capita total household expenditure constant per capita expenditure on food falls with the number of heads deaton and paxson s empirical evidence from developed and less developed countries seems to invalidate the claim of the second engel s law the main objective of this paper is to understand such paradoxical relationship between food consumption and household size our nonparametric empirical evidence drawn from the colombian 1985 urban survey shows that the food share is negatively related to total household per capita expenditure in line with deaton and paxson s claim but equivalent incomes shift to the right as theory predicts the regularity of our nonparametric results is an indication of a problem in the parametric specification of the engel curve modified by family size in fact using also the surveys of italy nepal djibouti and bangladesh we show that a theoretically plausible modified engel curve is coherent with the claim of the second engel law and explains deaton and paxson s paradox

economies of scale in the household puzzles and patterns from the american past i introduction in one example of economies of scale households with multiple members are able to achieve the same standard of living at lower per capita expenditures on public goods than smaller households for example if two adults unite to form one household the couple will be better off as they can share public goods such as housing lowering per capita expenditure on them the couple can funnel these savings into increased consumption of public goods more spacious housing than either could afford separately making each member better off than they were when they lived by themselves the basic idea has strong intuitive appeal living standards for households of different sizes could be equated with lower per capita expenditures for larger households who are able to economize on public goods household economies of scale are therefore fundamental to the measurement of living standards measuring the distribution of income the costs of children the extent of poverty and poverty thresholds necessitates an accounting for these economies of scale one difficulty with household economies of scale is that it can be difficult to estimate the size of the scale economy and household economies of scale are not as well defined as scale economies in production while economies of scale are a function of the size of the household the demand for goods and services generally derives from both household size and composition when researchers turned their attention to economies of scale in the household they overcame the problem of detection and measurement by concentrating on adult only households as in nelson 1988 measuring economies of scale for households where all members are the same type have identical tastes and are treated equally will not aid in the measurement of poverty the distribution of income and the costs of children where compositional heterogeneity matters a second difficulty lies in the income and substitution effects that scale economies have on private goods while both the income and substitution effects imply increased consumption of public goods the income and substitution effects work in opposite directions for private goods and it is not possible to know which effect will dominate unless we know more about the private good private goods that have low own and cross price elasticities and sizable income elasticities are goods whose consumption is likely to increase with household size the increased consumption of those private goods could be taken as a measure of household economies of scale where larger households are better off in terms of private consumption due to scale economies in public consumption using this insight deaton and paxson 1998 suggested that food would be a good choice for a private good where the income effect will dominate because food has few substitutes and they argue that substitution away from food will be less likely for households close to subsistence this implies that food expenditures should increase with household size the savings realized on public goods would be funneled to food a necessity that has few substitutes rather than increasing with household size deaton and paxson found that food expenditure per capita decreases with household size after considering and dismissing a number of possible explanations they conclude that their empirical results are a puzzle a literature analyzing this food puzzle has developed deaton and paxson 2003 gan and vernon 2003 gardes and starzec 2000 gibson 2002 gibson and kim 2007 horowitz 2002 perali 2001 vernon 2005 but research on household scale economies has yet to look at how or if scale economies change over time just as knowledge about scale economies at a point in time allows us to estimate the extent of poverty and inequality knowledge about changes in scale economies are useful for analyzing changes in living standards over time even more knowledge about changes in scale economies is important since average household size has changed over time

does it matter how we survey demand for food evidence from kenya and the philippines abstract this article examines the reliability of food quantity information collected from expenditure surveys and finds that measurement errors will very often be systematically correlated with income such that the response of food intakes to increases in income is seriously overstated this may be firstly because food quantities are not measured independently of income if total expenditures are the proxy used for income and secondly because food transfers in the form of guest and hired worker meals are under recorded these biases are illustrated using household surveys from kenya and the philippines

welfare measurement and measurement error the approximate effects of measurement error on a variety of measures of inequality and poverty are derived they are shown to depend on the measurement error variance and functionals of the error contaminated income distribution but not on the form of the measurement error distribution and to be accurate within a rich class of error free income distributions and measurement error distributions the functionals of the error contaminated income distribution that approximate the measurement error induced distortions can be estimated so it is possible to investigate the sensitivity of welfare measures to alternative amounts of measurement error and when an estimate of the measurement error variance is available to calculate corrected welfare measures the methods are illustrated in an application using indonesian household expenditure data

parallel realities exploring poverty dynamics using mixed methods in rural bangladesh this paper explores the implications of using two methodological approaches to study poverty dynamics in rural bangladesh using data from a unique longitudinal study we show how different methods lead to very different assessments of socio economic mobility we suggest five ways of reconciling these differences considering assets in addition to expenditures proximity to the poverty line other aspects of well being household division and qualitative recall errors considering assets and proximity to the poverty line along with expenditures resolves three fifths of the qualitative and quantitative differences use of such integrated mixed methods can therefore improve the reliability of poverty dynamics research

food stamps and food spending an engel function approach estimation of food stamp program fsp effects has been complicated by self selection and by a contradiction between observed spending patterns and the economic theory of consumer choice we developed a modified version of the traditional theory in which participant households may be partly extramarginal even if they have some cash spending on at home food using current population survey cps data for 2001 2005 we estimated engel functions for at home and away from home food spending for fsp participants and nonparticipants compared to nonparticipants with the same level of total income participants had higher at home food spending and lower away from home food spending copyright 2007 oxford university press

revolt on the nile economic shocks religion and political power using centuries of nile flood data i document that during deviant nile floods egypt s highest ranking religious authority was less likely to be replaced and relative allocations to religious structures increased these findings are consistent with historical evidence that nile shocks increased this authority s political influence by raising the probability he could coordinate a revolt i find that the available data provide support for this interpretation and weigh against some of the most plausible alternatives for example i show that while nile shocks increased historical references to social unrest deviant floods did not increase a proxy for popular religiosity together the results suggest an increase in the political power of religious leaders during periods of economic downturn publication abstract

analyzing nutritional impacts of price and income related shocks in malawi simulating household entitlements to food the 2007 2008 food price crisis and the following global economic recession has temporarily increased the number of people to suffer from hunger while the impacts can be measured with precision only ex post for policy makers it is critical to get a sense of likely impacts ex ante in order to plan approaches to mitigate these impacts in this paper we adopt a very simple micro based simulation approach to analyze how changes in prices of specific food groups such as maize prices or prices for staple foods as well as how negative short term household level income shocks affect the entitlements to calorie consumption of individuals and how these changes affect overall food poverty we illustrate our approach using household survey data from malawi we find that food poverty is of serious concern with large within country variations we find that price shocks for staple foods have a considerable impact on food security with particularly strong effects on poor net food buyers in rural and urban areas this paper demonstrates that it is possible to estimate food security impacts of price and income shocks ex ante in a relatively straightforward fashion that can be done relatively quickly and that is suitable for cross country assessments of the likely impacts of shocks on food security and the design of appropriate response measures

alcohol advertising bans consumption and control policies in seventeen oecd countries 1975 2000 this article uses cross country panel data to study the effects of advertising bans and other control policies on alcohol demand the null hypothesis is that advertising bans do not decrease alcohol consumption the study addresses several shortcomings in four previous cross country studies first an explanatory variable is included for other alcohol control policies second the study examines the history of advertising bans in oecd countries third the study also examines differences in cross country trends that characterize developed countries including aging of the population increased tourism higher unemployment rates and increased consumption of wine the mediterranean wine drinking countries are shown to be categorically distinct from the beer drinking countries and nordic spirits drinking countries fourth the study examines the panel data for unit roots and employs model specifications that correct for nonstationary data the empirical results indicate a significantly negative effect for th

dietary effects of the food stamp program based on data from the 1979 80 survey of food consumption in low income households this paper estimates the effects of changes in cash income and the food stamp benefit on household nutrient availability while controlling for two potential sources of selection bias the major finding of the empirical analysis is that the estimated dietary effects of changes in food stamp benefits are considerably larger than those resulting from changes in cash income with estimates of the ratios of the mpc for the food stamp benefit to the cash income mpc ranging from three to seven across nutrients no significant evidence of selection bias was found and the estimated dietary effects of food stamp benefits from the selection bias models are similar to those from the basic model estimated by ordinary least squares regression