Quality, quantity, and spatial variation of price: Back to the bog

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gibson, John; Kim, Bonggeun
• 署名单位: University of Waikato; Seoul National University (SNU)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2018.11.008
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 66-77
• 关键词: demand; Household surveys; QUALITY; Price reform; Unit values; separability

摘要

Estimating potential effects of price reforms is a key issue for many developing countries. Demand studies increasingly use household survey data on budget shares, which vary with quantity, price, and quality. If quality response to price is ignored, estimated price elasticities of quantity demand conflate responses on quantity and quality margins. Our review finds over 80% of published studies using budget shares from household survey data have this error. We use survey data from Vietnam, with prices and qualities observed over space, to directly estimate the price elasticity of quality. This is much larger than what is derived from the income elasticity of quality, based on the Deaton (1988) separability restrictions. Across the 45 items we study, the own-price elasticity of quantity demand is overstated by a factor of four, on average, if the response of quality to price is ignored.