The quantity and variety of households’ meat purchases: A censored demand system approach

This study investigates the demand for 10 disaggregated meat products by U.S. households. A censored demand system which imposes budget constraints in both observed and latent shares is estimated along with a detailed explanation of the estimation procedure. Additional details about the methodology not provided in previous studies should help researchers to empirically apply the model. An innovation of the study is to introduce the censored demand system model for studying the variety of a household's food purchases. Most households buy between seven and eight different products and hardly change the variety of their purchases with changes in meat expenditure.