Rotterdam vs Almost Ideal Models: Will the Best Demand Specification Please Stand Up?

Among the many demand specifications in the literature, the Rotterdam model and the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) have particularly long histories, have been highly developed, and are often applied in consumer demand systems modeling. Using Monte Carlo techniques, we seek to determine which model performs better in terms of its ability to recover the true elasticities of demand. We derive the correct formulae for the AIDS models elasticities, when the Törnqvist or two modified versions of the Stone index are used to linearize the model. The resulting linearized AIDS are compared to the full AIDS.