Economies of Scale and the Demand for Food in Switzerland: Parametric and Non‐Parametric Analysis
用参数和非参数方法检验了家庭公共品和规模经济对食品消费的影响，发现家庭规模增大时人均食品需求下降，且直接规模经济效应强于公共品效应。
This paper examines the role of household public goods arising from co‐residence and economies of scale in the allocation of household expenditure. Using both parametric and non‐parametric methods, the paper tests the theoretical prediction that in the presence of shared public goods, larger households should have higher per capita consumption of private goods like food, provided that they do not substitute too much towards the effectively cheaper public good. The results indicate that, at constant per capita total expenditure, the per capita demand for food declines with household size. No evidence is found in favour of the hypothesis that the endogeneity of male and female hours of work in the labour force could be responsible for this anomaly. However, an examination of the role of direct economies of scale in explaining this negative relationship yielded a negative relationship between household size and quality adjusted unit values, suggesting that the effects of direct economies of scale dominate those generated by public goods.