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In spite of major advances in the theoretical, positive and normative, literature analysing the welfare implications of public provision of private goods, empirical investigation is often limited to contingent valuation studies, for example, of health care programmes. In this article we argue that when a market for a (subsidised or free of charge) publicly provided good exists, a consumer demand approach can be used to construct a money metric of welfare corresponding to the consumption of public provision. We illustrate this approach in investigating age and income effects on household demand for health care in Cyprus, where free public provision is not universal and those entitled to it often resort to private supplementation. Our findings suggest that the money metric of welfare, which consumers attach to free access to publicly provided health care, varies with age and to a lesser extent with household income.

The paper presents the first empirical analysis of electricity consumption in Cyprus. Using annual data from 1960 to 2004, we have examined electricity use in the residential and the services sectors, which are the fastest-growing electricity consumers in the island, and its interaction with income, prices and the weather. The analysis was performed with the aid of time series analysis techniques such as unit root tests with and without a structural break in levels, cointegration tests, Vector Error Correction models, Granger causality tests and impulse response functions. Results show long-term elasticities of electricity use above unity for income, and of the order of − 0.3 to − 0.4 for prices. In the short-term electricity consumption is rather inelastic, mostly affected by weather fluctuations. Granger causality tests confirm exogeneity of electricity prices and bidirectional causality between residential electricity consumption and private income. The commercial sector is less elastic and reverts faster to equilibrium than the residential sector. Despite the relatively small sample size, results reported here are quite robust and can be used for forecasts and policy analyses.

The European Union's energy and climate policy package is expected to cause an increase in end-user prices of electricity and fuels. This paper assesses the distributional effects of these price increases in Cyprus by specifying and estimating a consumer demand system with price heterogeneity between households. This novel method allows obtaining robust parameter estimates even when household expenditure surveys are limited, as is the case in many European countries. The empirical analysis is conducted both conditional on energy-related household characteristics and unconditionally. We then use the estimated demand system to conduct welfare analysis. We find that the rise in energy prices results in welfare losses of EUR 101 per household (in 2009 prices) in year 2020, or a nationwide welfare loss of more than EUR'2009 33 million. Price increases will be regressive and will affect small and urban households more strongly than the rest of the population. Furthermore, we find that the largest proportion of welfare loss is due to loss of household's income purchasing power caused by higher energy prices, while the changes in relative prices induce deadweight loss which is a small part of welfare loss because of the limited substitutability of energy with other goods.

A consumer demand-based approach is proposed for estimating the shadow price of education relative to housing for households with children in state schools. This approach can be used together with or in place of a hedonic approach in countries in which the location of households is not disclosed in publicly available data. An empirical illustration is provided using UK data from the family expenditure surveys.