Search results

By using the World Bank's new poverty data that are based on the most recent International Comparison Program report, this research aims to revisit the response of poverty rate to increase in real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

The response is summarized in terms of elasticity of poverty with respect to real GDP per capita, which is the ratio of annual percentage fall in poverty rate to annual percentage increase in real GDP per capita. The main calculations are done for the entire group of less‐developed countries (LDCs), poverty‐dense South Asia region, and India, which probably has the highest poverty rate. The periods studied are 1981‐1990, 1990‐1999, and 1999‐2005. The calculations are done for four different poverty measures.

Five major points are noted. First, the elasticities generally show a declining tendency over the period, indicating that poverty‐reducing impact of income growth has been weakening. Second, the elasticities show huge differences across the poverty lines, and generally decline with higher poverty lines. Third, while global elasticities for $1.00 poverty line bear some resemblance to those reported or used by many scholars, elasticities for $2.00 and 2.50 poverty rates are dramatically lower, and reinforce the view that many influential estimates show the effect of income growth on poverty to be much higher than the data indicate. Fourth, elasticities for poverty‐dense South Asia are again seen to be much lower than those for the entire LDC group. Fifth, for India, where $2.00 and 2.50 poverty rates are higher than even in Sub‐Saharan Africa, the elasticities are extremely low and have been declining despite an acceleration in income growth. The overall implication seems to be that income growth has generally been less pro‐poor during the globalization era of the 1990s and the 2000s than during the 1980s. In particular, income growth in India seems to have had an extremely small impact on poverty, and that impact, notably for $1.00 and 1.25 poverty lines, has been declining.

First, although there is a vast literature on growth elasticities of poverty, this seems to be the first study that uses World Bank's new poverty data to judge the impact of income growth on poverty. Second, this is the only study that directly estimates and compares elasticities for the four poverty lines of $1.00, 1.25, 2.00, and 2.50, and shows large differences in the elasticities for different poverty lines. Third, this is probably the only work that compares elasticities for the 1980s, 1990s, and the 2000s. Fourth, although some indication of very low elasticities for South Asia and India does exist in a recent study, $2.50 elasticities reported in the present work for India, and even South Asia, should constitute an eye‐opener for scholars, policy‐makers, and international organizations in regard to the potential role of income growth in poverty reduction. Fifth, the observed decline in most elasticities during the 1990s and 2000s, as compared with the 1980s, despite higher income levels and growth rates, may shed light on the likely role of globalization in reducing poverty.

“In the provision of terminology and apparatus to aid thought I do not think that Marshall did economists any greater service than by the explicit introduction of the idea of ‘elasticity’.”

This paper presents a simple alternative measure for the arc elasticity of demand that comes naturally and possesses some attractive properties. In particular, it equals the point demand elasticity at some point inside the interval, thus leading to the exact estimations of demand elasticity when this is constant. It also yields narrower values that Dalton’s, Lerner’s and Allen’s widely used measures, and its relationships with the arc revenue elasticities keep exact analogy with those established for the point elasticity case.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of price and income changes on food and nutrient demand of rural households by including own-produced food and production-side effects in the demand estimation to correct potential measurement bias in the income and price elasticities for rural households in underdeveloped areas. Simulation results of income and grain price changes on food and nutrition security are provided for economic nutrition security policy applications.

This study analyzes survey data of 1,555 households from underdeveloped rural areas of China to find out how price and income changes affect food and nutrition insecurity of rural households. The authors employ the quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS) in a two-stage budgeting framework, using quality adjusted prices that were retrieved with regressions of the difference between the unit value surveyed at household level and its village average on household characteristics. The bias correction is implemented by using an augmented IV (instrumental variable) method, in which each market price is instrumented with farm-specific variables. Important macro- and micronutrient elasticities are computed for (a) households with agriculture as main income and (b) other households (of which still many have agriculture as a side business). Finally, the authors use these elasticities to simulate how changes in income or grain prices affect the food and nutrition security in the studied areas.

In general, food income elasticities of agricultural households are at a higher level than those for other households, and so are the food price elasticities. Income changes also have a greater nutritional effect on agricultural households than on other households. Nutrient income elasticities ranged from 0.22 (energy) to 0.27 (Vitamin A) for agricultural households and from 0.19 (energy) to 0.23 (Vitamin A) for other households. Grain price increases have greater effect on nutritional status of non-agricultural households, while a grain price reduction is not clearly favoring the nutritional situation of a particular household group.

This demand study contributes to the literature by taking into account differences in consumption of own production between households and the potential endogeneity of prices resulting thereof. The authors also demonstrate that merely reporting nutrient elasticities might not be sufficient for policy recommendations, and simulations should be reported as a valuable addition.

This paper aims to identify the income and price elasticities of demand for residential electricity in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and to verify their main determinants.

Meta-analysis and meta-regression methods were applied. After collecting and filtering journal articles, the authors obtained a sample composed of 76 studies covering 1979–2020.

The results show that the LAC's income elasticity is approximately 0.20 and 0.92 for the short and long term, respectively. The LAC's price elasticity is approximately −0.37 and −0.46 for the short and long term, respectively. Furthermore, the estimates are affected by the data structure, the estimation method used and the sampling period.

The authors close a gap in the literature by analyzing the price and income elasticities of demand through meta-analysis and meta-regression.

This study estimates the income elasticities of calorie, macronutrients (carbohydrate, protein and fat) and key micronutrients including cholesterol, vitamin A, vitamin C, sodium, potassium, calcium, iron, zinc and insoluble fiber separately for urban and rural adults aged 18–60, using China Health and Nutrition Survey data set from 2004 to 2011.

A semiparametric model, a two-way fixed-effects model and a quantile regression approach are employed to estimate nutrient–income elasticities.

The income elasticities of calorie, protein, fat, cholesterol and calcium are in the range of 0.059–0.076, 0.059–0.076, 0.090–0.112, 0.134–0.230, 0.183–0.344 and 0.058–0.105, respectively. The income elasticity of each of the other nutrients is less than 0.1. The income elasticities of calorie and the majority of nutrients included are larger for rural residents than for urban residents and for low-income groups than for medium- and high-income groups. Overall, in spite of having a relatively small impact, income growth is shown to still have an impact on improving the nutritional status of Chinese adults.

This study estimates nutrient–income elasticities separately for urban and rural adults, expanding the scope of the study regarding the impact of income on the nutritional status in China. Moreover, this study uses a pooled sample generated from the personal food consumption records covering foods consumed at home and away from home during 2004–2011, which is thus likely to more comprehensively reveal the causal relationship between income growth and changes in the nutritional status in China.

The purpose of this paper is to use data from the 1991 to 2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) to analyze how income in China is related to calorie intake.

The paper employs a variety of parametric, nonparametric, and semiparametric methods for cross-sectional and panel data, and estimates calorie-income elasticities for adults aged 18-60.

The calorie-income elasticities are generally small, ranging from −0.031 to 0.022. In addition, the results show no clear nonlinearity, regardless of whether parametric, nonparametric, or semiparametric approaches are used.

Using a wealth of estimation techniques, including parametric, nonparametric, and semiparametric approaches, this paper addresses some of the main methodological challenges encountered in estimating calorie-income elasticities. The magnitudes of calorie-income elasticities have policy implications especially with regards to the effectiveness of income-mediated policies aimed at combating food insecurity in China.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate aggregated apparel demand in the USA and Japan and to assess the positions of apparel products manufactured in the USA and Japan in comparison to imported apparel.

Based on Porter's industry competitiveness theory as a theoretical framework, the two‐step demand analysis, time‐series market analysis and elasticities of demand using “Almost ideal demand system” was conducted in order to reveal the overall market conditions of the USA and Japan and the market positions of domestically manufactured and imported apparel products in both countries.

Regardless of the country of origin, US consumers were price conscious in purchasing apparel products because they decreased purchase for not only domestically produced products but also imported products when prices increased. However, Japanese consumers' price concept toward apparel products was dual. They increased their purchase of domestically made products if the price was higher, and decreased their purchase of imported products.

This paper provides a framework for the apparel industry competitiveness assessment with regard to the demand‐side analysis of Porter's competitiveness theory. Moreover, there is no research in the current literature that assessed the US apparel demand with regard to industry competitiveness and a cross national view, especially compared with the Japanese apparel industry.

Most demand studies have concentrated on the estimation of expenditure elasticities for single commodity at a time thereby not being able to reveal the details of the relationships among various food items demanded by households. The purpose of this paper is to simultaneously estimate the demand equations for a number of food items and to estimate cross-price elasticities which are necessary for studying consumer behaviours, marketing, production planning and policy making.

Relevant data were collected from 320 randomly selected households in a multistage sampling procedure. The normalized data were analysed in a system of equation with symmetry, adding-up and homogeneity restrictions imposed on the model.

Expenditure elasticities show that gaari and palm oil were inferior food items while others could be classified as normal. Own-price elasticities showed that beans, plantain, yam flour and rice were luxuries while others were necessities. Cross-price elasticities revealed that some were substitutes of one another while others were compliments and some were not related.

The data were collected using a month recall approach and generalizing its findings beyond such months of a year may be misleading. Therefore, other researchers should repeat the study across months and locations.

The study recommended that food policies should be broad based to encompass majority of the food items consumed in the study area given the intrinsic relationship inherent among them as their demands were interrelated and consumer behaviours as revealed by various elasticities be considered in formulating food-related policies.

The paper emphasized the need to model food demand in a system of equations as against single equation modelling.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the Armington elasticities for world average values and country-specific values and obtain evidence for whether the world average elasticities and the “rule of two”, which have been applied in many papers, are accurate for cereals in trade policy studies related to an individual country.

The authors use panel data with a nested model to estimate and compare Armington elasticities based on world average values and country-specific values from 10 countries and regions.

The results suggest that cereals’ elasticities vary between world average values and country-specific values, and the “rule of two” is not strictly applicable. In fact, the “less than two” concept fits well in many cases.

This study sheds light on the effects of country heterogeneity on the elasticities and the accuracy of using world average elasticities in a trade policy study for an individual country. In addition, this paper offers estimated values of country-specific elasticities for 10 countries and regions.