An econometrics method to estimate demand of sugar


Negar Seyed Soleimany and Masoud Babakhani


Sugar is one of the strategic goods in the basket of households in each country and it plays an important role in supplying the required energy. On the other hand, it is one of the goods, which Iranian government is about to change its subsidy strategies. To design useful sugar subsidy strategies, it is necessary to know sugar position in the basket of households and be familiar with households' sugar demand or consumption behavior. This research estimates sugar demand for Iranian households by using time series of 1984-2008, which is taken from central bank of Iran. In this paper, first independent and dependent variables of household sugar demand model are chosen based on the literature review and theory of demand. Then, sugar demand is estimated by OLS technique and linear regression. The preliminary statistical observations such as Durbin-Watson, F statistic and R2 indicate that the regression is admissible. The results seem plausible and consistent with theory and show that sugar demand in Iranian households is associated with household expenditure, relative sugar price, family size and indicate that demand of sugar is affected during the war time. The results also show the income elasticity is 0.8 and price elasticity is -0.2 which means sugar is essential good for Iranian households and is inelastic to price.


DOI: j.msl.2011.08.010

Keywords: Sugar demand ,Regression analysis ,Sugar price ,Price elasticity

How to cite this paper:

Soleimany, N & Babakhani, M. (2012). An econometrics method to estimate demand of sugar.Management Science Letters, 2(1), 285-290.


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