NUTRIENT EFFECTS ON CONSUMER DEMAND: A PANEL DATA APPROACH

The objective of this paper is to analyze the Spanish demand for food taking into account the consumer's concern about the relationship between food diet and health. This concern is forcing food demand analysts to assume that consumer utility is a function of nutrients instead of simply the food products themselves. A CBS demand model has been considered to model the new demand function obtained, which is estimated with a complete panel data set. Ten broad categories, nine nutrients and the most relevant socio-economic variables have been considered. Finally, after an appropriate model selection strategy, expenditure, price and nutrient elasticities, as well as main sociodemographic effects, have been calculated.