不确定性下农村家庭食品消费的“习惯形成”检验

A Test of Habit Formation in Food Consumption with Uncertainty in Rural Households:An Investigation Using Micro Panel Data

本文利用“习惯形成”（habit formation）假说来研究中国家庭食品消费行为的特征，并首次利用1989--2006年农村家庭微观面板数据进行实证分析，从而试图给出近年来农村居民储蓄率持续偏高、消费倾向持续偏低的一种新解释。对动态面板模型的系统广义矩估计结果显示，农村居民家庭的食品消费有显著的习惯形成效应，这一效应即使在考虑了家庭的“预防性动机”之后仍然是稳健的，并且它对消费的边际影响比预防性动机更为重要。但是本文估计出的“习惯形成”参数比用总量数据得到的习惯形成参数要小。

This paper tests the habit formation hypothesis in food consumption for rural Chinese households. The household level data ranging from 1989 to 2006 is used to in the empirical analysis. The estimations from the system GMM suggest significant habit formation effects on food consumption of in rural China. These effects persist even after considering precautionary motivation. However our estimates using micro-level data are smaller in magnitude than the estimates using aggregate data in the literature.