Food Demand in Urban China and its Implications for Agricultural Trade: Model Selection Based on Forecasting

在快速的經濟成長以及加入世界貿易組織之情況下，中國大陸早已受到世界農產品貿易商及研究中國問題學者的矚目。為了要進入中國大陸的農產品市場，對於中國大陸未來農產品需求預測之準確性便相當重要。本研究的主要目的在評估不同的需求體系之預測精確度。本文使用中國大陸城鎮居民消費之省級資料來比較四種需求體系，包括似乎理想需求體系（Almost Ideal Demand System, AIDS）、線性近似之似乎理想需求體系（Linear Approximate AIDS）、線性支出體系（Linear Expenditure System）及二次支出體系（Quadratic Expenditure System）。根據樣本區間內、外預測準確度之衡量標準而言，似乎理想需求體系是最佳的模型。藉由估測的彈性值，可以引伸：在未來中國大陸城鎮居民的所得提高的情況下，其動物蛋白質農產品的消費量將會增加。這個潛在的趨勢，將嘉惠中國大陸本身的漁、牧業及飼料業以及其他國家地區對該產業的出口。然而，由於估計的自身價格彈性相當高，生產者或是農產貿易商對於定價策略需十分謹慎，以維持其獲利能力。

關鍵字

預測；需求體系；糧食；中國大陸城鎮

並列摘要

China, with a fast growing economy and its recent accession to the WTO, has attracted much attention of agricultural traders and research analysts. In order to assess the future potential of China’s agricultural market, it is important to have an accurate food demand model for prediction. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the predicting accuracy of several commonly used demand systems. Four demand systems, the AIDS, LA/AIDS, LES, and QES, are compared in this study by utilizing Chinese urban household consumption data at the provincial level. On the basis of within-sample and out-of-sample measures of predicting accuracy, the AIDS is the best. The estimated elasticities imply that as urban Chinese household income increases, the Chinese urban inhabitants will consume more animal protein foods. This potential trend will undoubtedly benefit the fishery and livestock industries as well as feed grain producers in China and other countries. However, suppliers and traders need to be cautious when instituting a price policy in order to maintain profitability.

並列關鍵字

forecasting ； demand systems ； food ； urban China

參考文獻

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