Mixed Signals for Food Consumption in Bulgaria for the Programming Period: 2014–2020 (An Attempt for Application of the Price Elasticity of Demand Concept)

Authors:

Pages: 31-43

Abstract:

This paper illustrates behavior of elasticities of demand for food commodities in Bulgaria for the 7-year EU programming period: 2014 – 2020. More specifically, the paper investigates how price elasticity of demand (PED) for food commodities oscillate for food – generally considered “normal” and “inferior/staple”. Due to the large dataset of food commodities and specifics of the panel data computations, the paper is centered upon primarily on computing the own-price elasticity of demand (OPED) of 78 foods. The OPED showed that food items in the panel data demonstrated various price elasticities along with price inelastic behaviors for the investigated period. The study finds that for some food commodities the own-price elasticities of demand are normal food items, while others are considered staple food items. All computations are based on official data, published by the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria.

Keywords:

D12

Download

NA