ECONOMIES OF SCALES IN EU HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION – SOME REMARKS BASED ON A COUNTRY-LEVEL ANALYSIS

• Authors: Hanna Dudek
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Economies of scale in household consumption generally occur as a result of joint consumption of public goods. In order to analyze this phenomenon expenditure shares on housing, which can be treated as a representative of the public good, and expenditure shares on food representing private goods are examined. The data used in this study come from the Eurostat database and cover the period between 2004 and 2012. Estimation of panel data models reveals that a large drop in food shares in post-communist countries was mainly due to rising household incomes. It is also found that an increase in housing shares was affected by the rising price of housing relative to other consumer prices in the EU-countries. Reducing differences in the considered components of expenditure structures make use in EU common equivalence scale in 2012 more reasonable than in 2004.

Keywords

EN

economies of scales; households; the EU countries; panel data

• Publisher: Katedra Ekonometrii i Statystyki, Szkoła Główna Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego w Warszawie
• Journal: Metody Ilościowe w Badaniach Ekonomicznych
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 74-83

Dates

published

2014

Contributors

author

Hanna Dudek

• Department of Econometrics and Statistics Warsaw University of Life Sciences – SGGW

References

• Ahn S. C., Low S. (1996) A refolmulation of the Hausman test for regression models with pooled cross-section time-series data, Journal of Econometrics, Vol. 71, pp. 309-319.
• Baltagi B. (2005) Econometric analysis of panel data, 3rd ed., John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex.
• Buhmann B., Rainwater L., Schmaus G., Smeeding T.M. (1988) Equivalence scales well-being, inequality, and poverty: sensitivity estimates across ten countries using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database”, Review of Income and Wealth, Vol. 34, pp. 115-142.
• Deaton A., Muellbauer J. (1980) Economics and consumer behavior, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Deaton A., Zaidi S. (2002) Guidelines for constructing consumption aggregates for welfare analysis, World Bank Publication nr 14101, Washington DC.
• Dennis I., Guio A.C. (2004) Monetary poverty in new Member states and candidate countries, Statistics in Focus, Vol. 12
• Dudek H. (2014) Zmiany w zakresie udziałów wybranych wydatków konsumpcyjnych w UE a problem skal ekwiwalentności, Roczniki Kolegium Analiz Ekonomicznych, (in press).
• Dudek H. (2011) Skale ekwiwalentności – estymacja na podstawie kompletnych modeli popytu, Wydawnictwo SGGW, Warszawa.
• Dunbar G., Lewbel A., Pendakur K. (2013) Children’s resources in collective households: identification, estimation, and an application to child poverty in Malawi, American Economic Review, Vol. 103(1), pp. 438-71.
• Hagenaars A., de Vos K., Zaidi M.A. (1994) Poverty statistics in the late 1980s: Research based on micro-data, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg.
• Perali F. (2003) The behavioral and welfare analysis of consumption, Kluwer Academic Publisher, Dordrecht.
• Rusnak Z. (2007) Statystyczna analiza dobrobytu ekonomicznego gospodarstw domowych, Wydawnictwo AE im. O. Langego we Wrocławiu, Wrocław.
• Schröder C. (2009) The construction and estimation of equivalence scales and their uses, in: D. Slottje (ed.), Quantifying consumer preferences, contributions to economic analysis, Vol. 288, Emerald, Bingley, pp. 349-362.
• Szulc A. (2004) Poverty measurement in transition countries joining the European Union: a Polish perspective, paper presented at the conference „Aligning the EU Social Inclusion Process and the Milennium Development Goals”, Vilnius 26-27.04.2004.
• Wooldridge J. (2002) Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data, The MIT Press, Massachusetts.