IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ecm/quante/v3y2012i1p29-51.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the price responsiveness of gasoline demand: Economic shape restrictions and nonparametric demand estimation

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Blundell
  • Joel L. Horowitz
  • Matthias Parey

Abstract

This paper develops a new method for estimating a demand function and the welfare consequences of price changes. The method is applied to gasoline demand in the U.S. and is applicable to other goods. The method uses shape restrictions derived from economic theory to improve the precision of a nonparametric estimate of the demand function. Using data from the U.S. National Household Travel Survey, we show that the restrictions are consistent with the data on gasoline demand and remove the anomalous behavior of a standard nonparametric estimator. Our approach provides new insights about the price responsiveness of gasoline demand and the way responses vary across the income distribution. We find that price responses vary nonmonotonically with income. In particular, we find that low- and high-income consumers are less responsive to changes in gasoline prices than are middle-income consumers. We find similar results using comparable data from Canada.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Blundell & Joel L. Horowitz & Matthias Parey, 2012. "Measuring the price responsiveness of gasoline demand: Economic shape restrictions and nonparametric demand estimation," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(1), pages 29-51, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecm:quante:v:3:y:2012:i:1:p:29-51
    DOI: QE91
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.3982/QE91
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/QE91?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecm:quante:v:3:y:2012:i:1:p:29-51. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.