The Demand for Organic, Integrated-Agriculture, and Conventional Fresh Vegetables: A Censored Inverse Almost Ideal Demand System

The Inverse Almost Ideal Demand System is employed for the empirical analysis of the demand for organic, integrated-agriculture, and conventional fresh vegetables, using a cross section data surveyed in Rethymno, Greece during the 2005-06 period. The demand system is estimated by employing the Amemiya-Tobin model by Wales and Woodland for the estimation of censored equation systems, which ensures that the adding-up restriction is satisfied for both the latent and the observed expenditure shares. The problem regarding the logarithm of quantities when zero purchases are reported, is resolved in a theoretically consistent way that allows full-sample estimation and yields unbiased parameter estimates. The empirical results suggest that integrated-agriculture fresh vegetables are luxury goods, whereas the cross-quantity uncompensated flexibilities indicate that consumers are not regular buyers of any of the three types of fresh vegetables. Both groups of consumers who currently buy integrated-agriculture vegetables and those who buy conventional vegetables can be easily induced to buy organic vegetables.