Flexible but Parsimonious Demand Designs: The Case of Gasoline
提出一种灵活但简约的期望函数形式，用三次样条估计条件期望，并利用1994年RTECS数据估计汽油需求，揭示收入和年龄对预期汽油使用量的有趣关系。
In this paper, we consider expectations of the form E[log(y)jx] = j=1 ff j log(x j ) as a good starting point for a more general analysis. We show why this naturally leads to the following flexible functional form, E[yjx] = f( j=1 h j (x j )), where f(\\Delta) and the h j (\\Delta)'s are estimated by cubic splines. The main objective of this paper is to provide a straightforward method to estimate E[yjx]. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by estimating gasoline demand from the 1994 RTECS data set, and in doing so, uncover interesting relationships of income and age on expected gasoline use.