Prices and household behavior in developing countries

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" Prices and household behavior in developing countries "
Christopher James McKelvey D. Thomas

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	52812
Doc. No	:	TL22766
Call number	:	‭3268546‬
Main Entry	:	Christopher James McKelvey
Title & Author	:	Prices and household behavior in developing countries\ Christopher James McKelvey
College	:	University of California, Los Angeles
Date	:	2005
Degree	:	Ph.D.
student score	:	2005
Page No	:	116
Abstract	:	This dissertation incorporates three chapters on commodity prices and household behavior in developing countries: Substantial international aid is spent reducing the cost of contraception in developing countries, as part of a larger effort to reduce total fertility and increase investment per child worldwide. The efficacy of such programs, however, remains uncertain, as non-random placement of subsidies and insufficient price variation have hindered prior attempts to estimate the effect of monetary and non-monetary contraceptive costs on fertility behavior. Exploiting the enormous price variation induced by the economic crisis in Indonesia, the first chapter employs longitudinal data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey to pin down the effect of contraceptive price, accessibility, and availability on contraceptive use and method choice over the life course. Accurate price measures are essential for estimating demand systems and for making inter-temporal and inter-regional comparisons of purchasing power, real income, poverty, and welfare. Because accurate price data are rare, it is now common to rely on "unit value" (commodity group expenditure per unit purchased) from budget surveys as a proxy for price. However, if households respond to price increases by switching to less expensive products, then unit value is an imperfect proxy. Exploiting the structure imposed by weak separability, Deaton (1988) introduces a method for estimating price elasticity using unit values that estimates and compensates for quality effects. The second chapter draws on rich survey data from Indonesia to test this identification strategy. It has been long established in the demand system literature that it is possible to model the demand for a diverse commodity group containing many constituent goods so long as one is willing to make the strong assumption that all prices within the group move in parallel. What has not been discussed in the literature is that, when demand for a commodity group is estimated using the commodity group expenditure share as the dependent variable, there are now two mechanisms by which price can impact the expenditure share: through quantity and quality responses. The third chapter discusses the importance of separately identifying these effects and proposes a method for doing so.
Subject	:	Social sciences; Demand system estimation; Developing countries; Household behavior; Indonesia; Prices; Unit value; Economics; Labor economics; Commodity prices; Consumer behavior; Developing countries--LDCs; Studies; 0510:Labor economics; 0501:Economics
Added Entry	:	D. Thomas
Added Entry	:	University of California, Los Angeles