THE ESTIMATION OF FOOD EXPENDITURES FROM HOUSEHOLD BUDGET DATA IN THEPRESENCE OF BULK PURCHASES

The aim of this article is the estimation of annual food expenditures with limited information about bulk purchases with data from a Spanish household-budget survey for 1990-1991. Three alternatives are compare d. The first, currently used for official purposes, does not use all t he information. The second uses all the available information in a rou gh way. The third assumes a formal model for the unknown frequency of purchases. The three alternatives are compared by a regression model t hat should be homogeneous with respect to the dummy variables that rep resent the partial information of the groups and should show a distinc t pattern of outliers under each alternative. Finally, we study the ef fect of the official and the best alternative on food inflation and in equality measures. We find that they lead to similar inflation rates b ut to different inequality estimates.