Empirical Regularities in Distributions of Individual Consumption Expenditure
Statistical Mechanics
2009-11-07 v1 General Finance
Abstract
We empirically investigate distributions of individual consumption expenditure f or four commodity categories conditional on fixed income levels. The data stems from the Family Expenditure Survey carried out annually in the United Kingdom. W e use graphical techniques to test for normality and lognormality of these distributions. While mainstream economic theory does not predict any structure for these distributions, we find that in at least three commodity categories individual consumption expenditure conditional on a fixed income level is lognormally distributed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0201195,
title = {Empirical Regularities in Distributions of Individual Consumption Expenditure},
author = {Martin Hohnisch and Sabine Pittnauer and Manisha Chakrabarty},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0201195},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
9 pages including figures; for Int. J. Mod. Phys. C 13, No. 4