The classic Working-Leser household Engel curve is unpacked to reveal individual budget allocations across commodities as a function of both individual and household total spending. Two main findings emerge on calibrating our model to an unusual sub-household dataset for Senegal. First, for all...

The focus of this Element is on the idea that choice is hierarchical so that there exists an order of acquisition of durable goods and assets as real incomes increase. Two main approaches to deriving such an order are presented, the so-called Paroush approach and Item Response Theory. An...

Can consumption taxes reduce inequality in developing countries? We combine household expenditure data from 31 countries with theory to shed new light on the redistributive potential and optimal design of consumption taxes. We use the place of purchase of each expenditure to proxy for informal...

In booms, households substitute luxuries for necessities, e.g., food away from home for food at home. This cyclical pattern of composition changes in the consumption basket has the potential to reduce the volatility of measures of the labor-market wedge, the gap between the marginal rate of...

Can consumption taxes reduce inequality in developing countries? We combine household expenditure data from 31 countries with theory to shed new light on the redistributive potential and optimal design of consumption taxes. We use the place of purchase of each expenditure to proxy for informal...

The classic Working-Leser household Engel curve is unpacked to reveal individual budget allocations across commodities as a function of both individual and household total spending. Two main findings emerge on calibrating our model to an unusual sub-household dataset for Senegal. First, for all...

In booms, households substitute luxuries for necessities, e.g., food away from home for food at home. Ignoring this cyclical pattern of composition changes in the consumption basket makes the labor-market wedge -- a measure of inefficiency that reflects the gap between the marginal rate of...

As billions of people in the developing world seek to increase their living standards, their aspirations pose a challenge to global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The emerging middle class are buying and operating energy intensive durables ranging from vehicles to air conditioners to...

This paper studies the differential effect of targeting cash transfers to men or women on the structure of household expenditures on non-durables. We study a policy intervention in the Republic of Macedonia, offering cash transfers to poor households, conditional on having their children...

Income growth in emerging economies has often been cited as a key driver of the past decade?s com-modity price boom?the longest and broadest boom since World War II. This paper shows that income has a negative and highly significant effect on real food commodity prices, a finding that is...

Many developing countries lack spatially disaggregated price data. Some analysts use "no-price" methods by using a food Engel curve to derive the deflator as that needed for nominally similar households to have equal food shares in all regions and time periods. This method cannot be tested in...

Many developing countries lack spatially disaggregated price data. Some analysts use "no-price" methods by using a food Engel curve to derive the deflator as that needed for nominally similar households to have equal food shares in all regions and time periods. This method cannot be tested in...

This paper studies the differential effect of targeting cash transfers to men or women on the structure of household expenditures on non-durables. We study a policy intervention in the Republic of Macedonia, offering cash transfers to poor households, conditional on having their children...

This paper studies the differential effect of targeting cash transfers to men or women on the structure of household expenditures on non-durables. We study a policy intervention in the Republic of Macedonia, offering cash transfers to poor households, conditional on having their children...

This paper studies the differential effect of targeting cash transfers to men or women on the structure of household expenditures on non-durables. We study a policy intervention in the Republic of Macedonia, offering cash transfers to poor households, conditional on having their children...

Income growth in emerging economies has often been cited as a key driver of the past decade’s com-modity price boom—the longest and broadest boom since World War II. This paper shows that income has a negative and highly significant effect on real food commodity prices, a finding that is...

Environmental Engel curves (EECs) plot the relationship between households' incomes and the pollution embodied in the goods and services they consume. They provide a basis for estimating the degree to which observed environmental improvements, which come in part from changing consumption...

We present a new multi-sector growth model that features nonhomothetic, constant-elasticity-of-substitution preferences, and accommodates long-run demand and supply drivers of structural change for an arbitrary number of sectors. The model is consistent with the decline in agriculture, the...

We present a new multi-sector growth model that features nonhomothetic, constant-elasticity- of-substitution preferences, and accommodates long-run demand and supply drivers of structural change for an arbitrary number of sectors. The model is consistent with the decline in agriculture, the...

Environmental Engel curves (EECs) plot the relationship between households' incomes and the pollution embodied in the goods and services they consume. They provide a basis for estimating the degree to which observed environmental improvements, which come in part from changing consumption...

This paper combines data on residential building energy performance certificates (EPC) and household energy expenditure to estimate expenditure equations (Engel curves) as a function of building energy efficiency and household characteristics. Engle curves for gas, oil, electricity, solid fuel,...

This paper proposes a method of estimating spatial bilateral price index numbers from cross-section consumer expenditure data on different items using Engel curve analysis. A simple technique is developed by which it is possible to find a method for estimating a set of consumer price index...

By representing a system of budget shares as an approximate factor model we determine its rank, i.e. the number of common functional forms, or factors and we estimate a base of the factor space by means of approximate principal components. We assume that the extracted factors span the same space...