Households Consumption Patterns and Equivalence Scales in Italy: 1997-2004

We use a sample of 43,700 observations on Italian households’ current expenditures to investigate consumption patterns from 1997 to 2004, a time period which encompasses the introduction of the Euro. Compensated and uncompensated price elasticities and expenditure elasticities for ten goods and heterogeneous households are obtained from the estimated parameters of a complete Censored non linear Almost Ideal Demand System (CAIDS) with demographic shifters. To tackle the problem of corner solutions for some goods we adopt the Two Step estimator proposed by Shonkweiler and Yen (1999). Parametric equivalence scales for the investigation period 1997-2004 are also computed for households with different demographic composition and different geographical location.