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DEMOGRAPHIC DEMAND SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATION TO EQUIVALENCE SCALES ESTIMATION AND INEQUALITY ANALYSIS: THE AUSTRALIAN EVIDENCE
Author(s) -
BLACKLOW PAUL,
NICHOLAS AARON,
RAY RANJAN
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
australian economic papers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1467-8454
pISSN - 0004-900X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8454.2010.00394.x
Subject(s) - estimation , equivalence (formal languages) , econometrics , economics , inequality , statistics , mathematics , mathematical analysis , management , discrete mathematics
This paper proposes and applies an alternative demographic procedure for extending a demand system to allow for the effect of household size and composition changes, along with price changes, on expenditure allocation. The demographic procedure is applied to two recent demand functional forms to obtain their estimable demographic extensions. The estimation on pooled time series of Australian Household Expenditure Surveys yields sensible and robust estimates of the equivalence scale, and of its variation with relative prices. Further evidence on the usefulness of this procedure is provided by using it to evaluate the nature and magnitude of the inequality bias of relative price changes in Australia over a period from the late 1980s to the early part of the new millennium.