Summary The tendency of sectoral demand to satiate has long been argued to be a key driver of the structural change in an economy (Pasinetti 1981; Saviotti 2001). This literature raises the question as to what extent cross-sectional patterns of household expenditure can be used to make inferences...

Social research, from economics to demography and epidemiology, makes extensive use of statistical models in order to establish causal relations. The question arises as to what guarantees the causal interpretation of such models. In this paper we focus on econometrics and advance the view that...

Using UK household expenditure data spanning over four decades (1960–2000), this paper employs Engel’s needs-based approach to analyzing household expenditure patterns and finds evidence for the existence of a stable hierarchy of expenditure patterns at low levels of household income....

The tendency of sectoral demand to satiate has long been argued to be a key driver of the structural change in an economy (Pasinetti 1981; Saviotti 2001). This literature raises the question as to what extent cross-sectional patterns of household expenditure can be used to make inferences about how...

As people become richer they get the opportunity of consuming more but also qualitatively better goods. This holds for a basic commodity like food as well. We investigate food consumption in Russia, taking into account both expenditure and nutrition value in terms of calories. We analyse how...

This paper investigates the varieties of reductionism and realism about causal relations in macroeconometrics. There are two issues, which are kept distinct in the analysis but which are interrelated in the development of econometrics. The first one is the question of the reducibility of causal...

Engel curves describe how household expenditure on particular goods or services depends on household income. German statistician Ernst Engel (1821-1896) was the first to investigate this relationship systematically in an article published about 150 years ago. The best-known single result from...