# Elasticity of Durable Goods vs Non-Durable Goods

Does anyone know any seminal reference (either a paper in a top economics journal or a book) that compares own-price elasticities of demand for durable vs non-durable goods?

My intuition tells me that durable goods should be more elastic ... but not sure how to defend that statement without a reference.

Edit:

As requested I added some more content to the question. However, the question trying to find an answer to is merely an empirical question and therefore I do not have a specific model in mind. To be slightly more precise:

Consider a demand function for good $i$: $P_i = f(Q_i, X_i)$ where $P_i$ is the price of good $i$, $Q_i$ is the quantity and $X_i$ are other factors that influence demand. What I am looking are empirical estimates for $\frac{\partial Q_i}{\partial P_i} \frac{P_i}{Q_i}$ for two sectors: durable goods and non-durable goods. Now usually there is a problem in estimating this elasticity given the standard endogeneity problems. However, there are methods that have been used to disentangle such quantities. Two examples are: Berry,Levinson and Pakes (1995) and Broda and Weinstein (2004).
There are few anecdotal evidence of differences in elasticities for durable and non durable goods. One example taken from here is:

Duration of price change: For non-durable goods, elasticity tends to be greater over the long-run than the short-run. In the short-term it may be difficult for consumers to find substitutes in response to a price change, but, over a longer time period, consumers can adjust their behavior. For example, if there is a sudden increase in gasoline prices, consumers may continue to fuel their cars with gas in the short-run, but may lower their demand for gas by switching to public transportation, carpooling, or buying more fuel-efficient vehicles over a longer period of time. However, this tendency does not hold for consumer durables. The demand for durables (cars, for example) tends to be less elastic, as it becomes necessary for consumers to replace them with time.

But this is not an sufficient academic reference which is what I am looking for.

• Can you make your question formally precise? – Michael Greinecker Jan 11 '18 at 15:21
• I have added some more content to the question, but I am not sure what you are exactly after. – phdstudent Jan 11 '18 at 15:32
• Well, I didn't even know you wanted to get empirical estimates from your original question. – Michael Greinecker Jan 11 '18 at 15:39
• Oh. I see. My apologies. In any case a theoretical estimate would also do the trick actually. Usually if there is a paper with a theory estimate almost for sure one can find an empirical paper that tested the theoretical framework. – phdstudent Jan 11 '18 at 15:40