What Does Variation in Survey Design Reveal About the Nature of Measurement Errors in Household Consumption?

John Gibson, Kathleen Beegle, Joachim De Weerdt and Jed Friedman ()

Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato

Abstract: We use data from eight different consumption questionnaires randomly assigned to 4,000 households in Tanzania to obtain evidence on the nature of measurement errors in estimates of household consumption. While there are no validation data, the design of one questionnaire and the resources put into its implementation make it likely to be substantially more accurate than the others. Comparing regressions using data from this benchmark design with results from the other questionnaires shows that errors have a negative correlation with the true value of consumption, creating a non-classical measurement error problem for which conventional statistical corrections may be ineffective.

Keywords: consumption; Engel curves; household surveys; measurement error; Tanzania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C81 D12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2013-02-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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https://repec.its.waikato.ac.nz/wai/econwp/1301.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: What does Variation in Survey Design Reveal about the Nature of Measurement Errors in Household Consumption? (2015)
Working Paper: What does variation in survey design reveal about the nature of measurement errors in household consumption ? (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wai:econwp:13/01

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