The demand for food grain in China: new insights into a controversy
There is a substantial controversy in the economics literature over the magnitude of the expenditure elasticity for food grain in China that is caused, to a large extent, by whether time-series or cross-section data are used in the analysis. A set of reasonable elasticities for a complete demand sys...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | Inglés |
| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
2001
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/156569 |
| Summary: | There is a substantial controversy in the economics literature over the magnitude of the expenditure elasticity for food grain in China that is caused, to a large extent, by whether time-series or cross-section data are used in the analysis. A set of reasonable elasticities for a complete demand system is estimated by using a panel of county level data in Guangdong Province for the last ten years. The results show that food grain has a small positive income elasticity, implying that food grain is not an inferior good in China. The reason that consumption per capita has not increased during a period of rapid economic growth in income is that the relative prices of the food and non-food substitutes for food grain have decreased. |
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