摘要：The modern theory of consumer behavior provides a number of a priori restrictions that are useful in the estimation of systems of demand equations. Of particular importance for applied work is the fact that the restrictions from the theory can be employed to obtain estimates of cross price elasticities and flexibilities that would not be available in their absence. These estimates are important to agricultural policy problems which increasingly recognize interactions and secondary effects of existing and proposed programs. This study is concerned with an application of the theory in estimating a system of demand equations for twenty-seven food commodity groups and a nonfood group. After a review of the basis for the prior information supplied by the theory, it is applied to times series and cross section data on the Canadian economy. Resulting estimates are compared to others for Canada and the U.S. In addition, a framework is presented for utilizing the estimated demand parameters in forecasting and policy analysis.
