2009/17 | LEM Working Paper Series | |
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More or Better ? Measuring Quality versus Quantity in Food Consumption |
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Corinna Manig, Alessio Moneta |
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Keywords | ||
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Food consumption patterns, calorie intake, income elasticity decomposition, Engelcurves, method of average derivatives
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JEL Classifications | ||
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D12
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Abstract | ||
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As people become richer they get the opportunity of consuming more but also qualitatively
better goods. This holds for a basic commodity like food as well. We investigate
food consumption in Russia, taking into account both expenditure and nutrition value in
terms of calories. We analyze how food consumption patterns change with increasing income
by estimating both "quantity Engel curves" and "quality Engel curves". The former
describe the functional dependence of calories consumed on total expenditure. The latter
trace out the dependence of price per calorie as a proxy for quality on total expenditure.
We compare income elasticities of quantity with income elasticities of quality. In these
Russian data for years 2000-2002 the reaction of quality to changes in income is significantly
stronger than the reaction of quantity to income changes suggesting that Russian
households tend to choose higher quality food items as income rises.
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