S. Chatterjee et al., EXPENDITURE PATTERNS AND AGGREGATE CONSUMER-BEHAVIOR - SOME EXPERIMENTS WITH AUSTRALIAN AND NEW-ZEALAND DATA, Economic record, 70(210), 1994, pp. 278-291
This paper analyzes expenditure patterns in Australia and New Zealand
by estimating 'complete' demand systems on budget data. Tests of linea
r Engel curves and separable preferences are carried our on both data
sets. The study also exploits the information on household composition
to test for demographic effects. Several new demographically extended
demand functional forms are proposed and estimated, find their behavi
oural and welfare implications in terms of equivalence scales compared
. The study yields plausible estimates of price and expenditure elasti
cities and shows that relevant price information can be used successfu
lly to estimate the 'cost' of a child.