Barigozzi, Matteo, Alessi, Lucia, Capasso, Marco and Fagiolo, Giorgio (2009) The distribution of consumption-expenditure budget shares: evidence from Italian households. European Central Bank working paper series, 1061. European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany.
Abstract
This paper explores the statistical properties of house-hold consumption-expenditure budget share distributions —defined as the share of household total expenditure spent for purchasing a specific category of commodities— for a large sample of Italian households in the period 1989-2004. We find that household budget share distributions are fairly stable over time for each specific category, but profoundly heterogeneous across commodity categories. We then derive a para-metric density that is able to satisfactorily characterize household budget share distributions and: (i) is consistent with the observed statistical properties of the underlying levels of household consumption-expenditure distributions; (ii) can accommodate the observed across-category heterogeneity in household budget share distributions. Finally, we taxonomize commodity categories according to the estimated parameters of the proposed density. We show that the resulting classification is consistent with the traditional economic scheme that labels commodities as necessary, luxury or inferior.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.ecb.europa.eu |
| Additional Information: | © 2009 European Central Bank |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Household consumption expenditure, budget shares |
| Library of Congress subject classification: | H Social Sciences > HA Statistics H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory |
| Journal of Economic Literature Classification System: | C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C1 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: General > C12 - Hypothesis Testing D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics > D12 - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis D - Microeconomics > D3 - Distribution |
| Sets: | Departments > Statistics Collections > Economists Online |
| Rights: | http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/rights/LSERO.htm |
| Identification Number: | 1061 |
| URL: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/31207/ |
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