October 10, 2001

Ec155A and B

 

This is a set of estimates of the own-price and income elasticity of demand for water in urban Cambodia

 

The computer code below uses regression analysis to estimate these lasticities, using the data that you can see in our course ‘handouts’ file.

 

. reg  l_m3  l_h77  l_h179  l_h168  l_h46 dh6 dh135_1  public sub

 

  Source |       SS       df       MS                  Number of obs =     285

---------+------------------------------               F(  8,   276) =    7.62

   Model |  27.0319312     8   3.3789914               Prob > F      =  0.0000

Residual |  122.425878   276   .44357202               R-squared     =  0.1809

---------+------------------------------               Adj R-squared =  0.1571

   Total |  149.457809   284   .52625989               Root MSE      =  .66601

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    l_m3 |      Coef.   Std. Err.       t     P>|t|       [95% Conf. Interval]

---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------

   l_h77 |  -.4264823   .1351156     -3.156   0.002      -.6924703   -.1604943

  l_h179 |   .1841558   .0544804      3.380   0.001       .0769058    .2914058

  l_h168 |   .3170002   .1147267      2.763   0.006       .0911496    .5428508

   l_h46 |   .1259026   .0674556      1.866   0.063      -.0068903    .2586954

     dh6 |  -.1440701   .1068434     -1.348   0.179      -.3544017    .0662615

 dh135_1 |   .2255121   .0844093      2.672   0.008       .0593443    .3916799

  public |  -.0437568   .1439393     -0.304   0.761      -.3271152    .2396016

     sub |  -.0038056   .1384297     -0.027   0.978      -.2763177    .2687065

   _cons |   2.305786   1.183102      1.949   0.052      -.0232647    4.634837

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

. * l_h77 is an estimate of the own-price elasticity –

At 0.42, demand is relatively inelastic

 

. * l_h179 is an estimate of the income –

At 0.18, not a huge difference between the rich and the poor

 

. * l_h68 is an estimate of the effect of family size –

At 0.31, larger families need more water, but not at a one-to-one rate

 

What policy conclusions can you reach from these results?