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...

This paper analyzes the philosophical underpinnings of the most relevant approaches to causal inference developed in macroeconometrics, from the Cowles Commission to the var program. The development of macroeconometrics in the last sixty years reflects a change of position regarding the concept...

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...

We measure how different the shapes of Engel curves are across 59 commodity groups. The same analysis is carried out for their derivatives and variances. While Engel curves possess a relatively homogeneous shape, significantly more heterogeneity is present in derivatives and when particular...