Structural breaks in consumption patterns: India 1952-1991

Brinda Viswanathan

Applied Economics, 2001, vol. 33, issue 9, 1187-1200

Abstract: This study improves upon the econometric modelling for testing and incorporating structural breaks for a study on Indian consumption patterns covering a period of four decades and also explores the causes of such breaks. The tests for structural breaks in consumption patterns indicate multiple break points which are not uniform across the population groups and also across commodity groups. Further, the results indicate for the first time, that the breaks could often be induced by the changes in the data collection methodology of the survey and not due to changes in consumer behaviour alone. Apart from this, there is a shift in the consumption pattern during the mid-1980s in both the rural and the urban sectors. For the lowest expenditure class the shift is away from food items with the rural sector showing a change in the price response and the urban sector showing a change in the total expenditure coefficient. For the middle and the upper expenditure classes the shifts are not only from the food items towards non-food items but also from the 'food' group that includes items like cereals, milk and milk products towards the 'other food' group which includes items like vegetables and fruits. Its causes are found to be changes in preferences as well as the income effect.

Date: 2001
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036840010004581 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:33:y:2001:i:9:p:1187-1200

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036840010004581

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().