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| Francesco Chelli, Chiara Gigliarano and Elvio Mattioli |
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| ''The impact of inflation on heterogeneous groups of
households: an application to italy'' |
| ( 2009, Vol. 29 No.2 ) |
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| This paper explores the determinants of the heterogeneity in the expenditure behaviors of the
Italian households, using the Households Expenditure Survey provided by the Italian National
Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) for the year 2005. We assume that differences among consumers
are associated with differences in their economic and socio-demographic characteristics (such
as gender, employment status and age of the householder, number of household components,
presence of under 18 years old components), and we look for those characteristics that better
differentiate groups of households according to their purchasing patterns. We apply a nonparametric
discriminant analysis based on the various expenditure budget components, and detect
the most discriminating partitions of families. The technique allows us also to identify the
specific goods of consumption that significantly differ across the groups identified by the best
partitions. We then study the different effects of the price dynamics on subgroups of households,
and propose consumer price indices specific for the ptimal households groups. |
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| Keywords: consumption, consumer price index, discriminant analysis, household expenditure survey |
JEL: D1 - Household Behavior: General
C4 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics |
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| Manuscript Received : Feb 09 2009 | | Manuscript Accepted : Jun 05 2009 |
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