 Beyond Engel's law - A cross-country analysisJournal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2013, vol. 47, issue C, 118-134 Abstract: Engel's law is known to be extraordinarily consistent across time and space. To substantiate the distinction between necessities and luxuries, already Ernst Engel (1895) approached a behaviorally founded comprehensive assessment of structural changes in consumer expenditures. To build upon Engel's legacy and to complement the scarce empirical literature, a behavioral approach is applied. It is conjectured that differences in satiation patterns of universally-shared needs translate, on the aggregate level, into different shapes of Engel curves and thus also into different income elasticities of demand. Utilizing nonparametric regression techniques, it is explored whether and which expenditure categories change systematically with rising income. In line with the theoretical expectations, a number of empirical regularities in consumer expenditure patterns can be identified that go well beyond Engel's law. Keywords: Engel's law; Engel curves; Necessity; Luxury; Differential satiation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:47:y:2013:i:c:p:118-134 DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2013.10.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier |
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