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Temporal Aggregation And Treatment Of Zero Dependent Variables In The Estimation Of Food Demand Using Cross-Sectional Data, Kristyn Leffler

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This study analyzes U.S. consumers' demand for eight food commodity groups: Cereal and Bakery goods, Meat and Eggs, Dairy, Fruits and Vegetables, Nonalcoholic Beverages, Fats and Oils, Sugar and Sweets, and Miscellaneous goods. The estimation of the demand system of equations is carried out using the EASI demand model of Lewbel and Pendakur (2009) and five years of data (2002-2006) from the Nielsen Homescan program. Two different levels of temporal aggregation, monthly and the average month within a year, referred to as 'annual' were considered. Using the monthly data, I evaluated the performance of two econometric methods to account for …