The identification of a VAR requires differentiating between correlation and causation. This paper presents a method to deal with this problem. Graphical models, which provide a rigorous language to analyze the statistical and logical properties of causal relations, associate a particular set of...

This paper revisits Ernst Engel's (1857) original article in which he systematically in-vestigated the relationship between consumption expenditure and income. While he ismainly remembered today for the discovery of Engel's law, we highlight how Engel ad-dressed in a particular way the issue of...

Certain properties of Engel curves have been linked to the occurrence of structural changein the economy (Pasinetti 1981, Metcalfe et al. 2006, Saviotti 2001). From an empiricalperspective, however, very little has been done to examine (i) whether indeed satiation isa general property of Engel...

Economic growth tends to stimulate fundamental changes in consumption patterns as consumers who get rich tend to spread their spending more evenly across a wider variety of goods and services. Comparing cross sectional spending patterns across rich and poor countries, we investigate how this...

We propose a general protocol for calibration and validation of complex simulation models by an approach based on discovery and comparison of causal structures. The key idea is that configurations of parameters of a given theoretical model are selected by minimizing a distance index between two...

As people become richer they get the opportunity of consuming more but also qualitativelybetter goods. This holds for a basic commodity like food as well. We investigatefood consumption in Russia, taking into account both expenditure and nutrition value interms of calories. We analyze how food...