IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jageco/v54y2003i2p247-267.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economies of Scale and the Demand for Food in Switzerland: Parametric and Non‐Parametric Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Awudu Abdulai

Abstract

This paper examines the role of household public goods arising from co‐residence and economies of scale in the allocation of household expenditure. Using both parametric and non‐parametric methods, the paper tests the theoretical prediction that in the presence of shared public goods, larger households should have higher per capita consumption of private goods like food, provided that they do not substitute too much towards the effectively cheaper public good. The results indicate that, at constant per capita total expenditure, the per capita demand for food declines with household size. No evidence is found in favour of the hypothesis that the endogeneity of male and female hours of work in the labour force could be responsible for this anomaly. However, an examination of the role of direct economies of scale in explaining this negative relationship yielded a negative relationship between household size and quality adjusted unit values, suggesting that the effects of direct economies of scale dominate those generated by public goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Awudu Abdulai, 2003. "Economies of Scale and the Demand for Food in Switzerland: Parametric and Non‐Parametric Analysis," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 247-267, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:54:y:2003:i:2:p:247-267
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-9552.2003.tb00062.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-9552.2003.tb00062.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1477-9552.2003.tb00062.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vasiliki Fourmouzi & Margarita Genius & Peter Midmore, 2012. "The Demand for Organic and Conventional Produce in London, UK: A System Approach," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(3), pages 677-693, September.
    2. Echeverría, Lucía & Molina, José Alberto, 2022. "Exploring household heterogeneities of the Deaton-Paxson puzzle: Evidence for Argentina," Nülan. Deposited Documents 3622, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Sociales, Centro de Documentación.
    3. John Gibson & Bonggeun Kim, 2018. "Economies of scale, bulk discounts, and liquidity constraints: comparing unit value and transaction level evidence in a poor country," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 21-39, March.
    4. Houtian Ge & Patrick Canning & Stephan Goetz & Agnes Perez, 2018. "Effects of scale economies and production seasonality on optimal hub locations: the case of regional fresh produce aggregation," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(2), pages 157-169, March.
    5. Thomas F. Crossley & Yuqian Lu, 2018. "Returns to scale in food preparation and the Deaton–Paxson puzzle," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 5-19, March.
    6. Perali, Federico, 2008. "The second Engel law: Is it a paradox?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(8), pages 1353-1377, November.
    7. Shari Eli & Nicholas Li, 2015. "Caloric Requirements and Food Consumption Patterns of the Poor," NBER Working Papers 21697, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jageco:v:54:y:2003:i:2:p:247-267. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-857X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.