Giffen good

In microeconomics and consumer theory, a Giffen good is a product that people consume more of
as the price rises and vice versa, violating the law of demand.

Indifference map with two budget

lines (red) depending on the price of
Giffen good x

For ordinary goods, as the price of the good rises, the substitution effect makes consumers
purchase less of it, and more of substitute goods; the income effect can either reinforce or weaken
this decline in demand, but for an ordinary good never outweighs it. By contrast, a Giffen good is so
strongly an inferior good (in higher demand at lower incomes) that the contrary income effect more
than offsets the substitution effect, and the net effect of the good's price rise is to increase demand
for it. This phenomenon is known as the Giffen paradox.
Background

Types of goods in economics

Giffen goods are named after Scottish economist Sir Robert Giffen, to whom Alfred Marshall
attributed this idea in his book Principles of Economics, first published in 1890. Giffen first proposed
the paradox from his observations of the purchasing habits of the Victorian era poor.

It has been suggested by Etsusuke Masuda and Peter Newman that Simon Gray described "Gray
goods" in his 1815 text entitled The Happiness of States: Or An Inquiry Concerning Population, The
Modes of Subsisting and Employing It, and the Effects of All on Human Happiness.[1] The chapter
entitled A Rise in the Price of Bread Corn, beyond a certain Pitch, tends to increase the Consumption of
it, contains a detailed account of what have come to be called Giffen goods, and which might better
be called Gray goods. They also note that George Stigler corrected Marshall's misattribution in a
1947 journal article on the history.[2]

Analysis

For almost all products, the demand curve has a negative slope: as the price increases, quantity
demanded for the good decreases. (See Supply and demand for background.)

Giffen goods are the exception to this general rule. Unlike other goods or services, the price point at
which supply and demand meet results in higher prices and greater demand whenever market
forces recognize a change in supply and demand for Giffen goods. As a result, when price goes up,
the quantity demanded also goes up. To be a true Giffen good, the good's price must be the only
thing that changes to produce a change in quantity demanded.
Giffen goods should not be confused with Veblen goods: Veblen goods are products whose demand
increases if their price increases because the price is seen as an indicator of quality or status.

The classic example given by Marshall is of inferior quality staple foods, whose demand is driven by
poverty that makes their purchasers unable to afford superior foodstuffs. As the price of the cheap
staple rises, they can no longer afford to supplement their diet with better foods, and must consume
more of the staple food.

As Mr. Giffen has pointed out, a rise in the price of bread makes so large a drain on
the resources of the poorer labouring families and raises the marginal utility of
money to them so much that they are forced to curtail their consumption of meat
and the more expensive farinaceous foods: and, bread being still the cheapest food
which they can get and will take, they consume more, and not less of it.

— Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (1895 ed.)[3]

There are three necessary conditions for this situation to arise:[4]

1. the good in question must be an inferior good,

2. there must be a lack of close substitute goods, and

3. the goods must constitute a substantial percentage of the buyer's income, but not such a
substantial percentage of the buyer's income that none of the associated normal goods are
consumed.

If precondition #1 is changed to "The goods in question must be so inferior that the income effect is
greater than the substitution effect" then this list defines necessary and sufficient conditions. The
last condition is a condition on the buyer rather than the goods itself, and thus the phenomenon is
also called a "Giffen behavior".

Examples

Suppose a consumer has a budget of $6 per day that they spend on food. They must eat three
meals a day, and there are only two options for them: the inferior good, bread, which costs $1 per
meal, and the superior good, cake, which costs $4 per meal. Cake is always preferable to bread. At
present, the consumer would purchase 2 loaves of bread and one cake, completely exhausting their
budget to fill 3 meals each day. Now, if the price of bread were to rise from $1 to $2, then the
consumer would have no choice but to give up cake, and spend their entire budget on 3 loaves of
bread, in order to eat three meals a day. In this situation, their consumption of bread would have
actually increased as a result of the price increase. Thus bread would be a Giffen good in this
example.

Investor Rob Arnott said in 2021 that the stock market is a Giffen good. Widespread interest in the
market tends to increase during periods of rising prices for stocks and decrease during market
crashes, which is contrary to ideal investing practices.[5]

Empirical evidence

Evidence for the existence of Giffen goods has generally been limited. A 2008 paper by Robert
Jensen and Nolan Miller argued rice and wheat noodles were Giffen goods in parts of China.[6]
Another 2008 paper by the same authors experimentally demonstrated the existence of Giffen
goods among people at the household level by directly subsidizing purchases of rice and wheat
flour for extremely poor families.[7] In this paper, the field experiment conducted in 2007 consisted
of the province of Hunan, where rice is a dietary staple, and the province of Gansu, where wheat is a
staple. In both provinces, random households were selected and were offered their dietary staple at
subsidized rates. After the completion of the project, it could be found that the demands from
Hunan households who were offered the rice fell drastically. Meanwhile, the demands of wheat in
Gansu implies weak evidence of the Giffen paradox.

In 1991, Battalio, Kagel, and Kogut published an article arguing that quinine water is a Giffen good
for some lab rats. However, they were only able to show the existence of a Giffen good at an
individual level and not the market level.[8]

Giffen goods are difficult to study because the definition requires a number of observable
conditions. One reason for the difficulty in studying market demand for Giffen goods is that Giffen
originally envisioned a specific situation faced by individuals in poverty. Modern consumer
behaviour research methods often deal in aggregates that average out income levels, and are too
blunt an instrument to capture these specific situations. Complicating the matter are the
requirements that availability of substitutes be limited and that consumers be not so poor that they
can only afford the inferior good. For this reason, many text books use the term Giffen paradox
rather than Giffen good.

Some types of premium goods (such as expensive French wines, or celebrity-endorsed perfumes)
are sometimes called Giffen goods via the claim that lowering the price of these high-status goods
decreases demand because they are no longer perceived as exclusive or high-status products.
However, to the extent that the perceived nature of such high-status goods actually changes
significantly with a substantial price drop, this behavior disqualifies them from being considered
Giffen goods, because the Giffen goods analysis assumes that only the consumer's income or the
relative price level changes, not the nature of the good itself. If a price change modifies consumers'
perception of the good, they should be analysed as Veblen goods. Some economists question the
empirical validity of the distinction between Giffen and Veblen goods, arguing that whenever there is
a substantial change in the price of a good its perceived nature also changes, since price is a large
part of what constitutes a product. [9] However, the theoretical distinction between the two types of
analysis remains clear, and which one should apply to any actual case is an empirical matter. Based
on microeconomic consumer theory, it assumes that the consumer could value a good without
knowing the price. However, when the consumers who were constrained by income and price need
to choose the optimal goods, the goods must be valued with available prices. Because, in some
degrees, the higher price indicates higher values of goods offering to the consumers.

Great Famine in Ireland

Potatoes during the Irish Great Famine were once considered to be an example of a Giffen good.
Along with the Famine, the price of potatoes and meat increased subsequently. Compared to meat,
it is obvious that potatoes could be much cheaper as a staple food. Due to poverty, individuals could
not afford meat anymore; therefore, demand for potatoes increased. Under such a situation, the
supply curve will increase with the rise in potatoes’ price, which is consistent with the definition of
Giffen good. However, Gerald P. Dwyer and Cotton M. Lindsey challenged this idea in their 1984
article Robert Giffen and the Irish Potato,[10][11] where they showed the contradicting nature of the
Giffen "legend" with respect to historical evidence.

The Giffen nature of the Irish potato was also later discredited by Sherwin Rosen of the University of
Chicago in his 1999 paper Potato Paradoxes.[12] Rosen showed that the phenomenon could be
explained by a normal demand model.

Charles Read has shown with quantitative evidence that bacon pigs showed Giffen-style behaviour
during the Irish Famine, but that potatoes did not.[13][14]

Other proposed examples

Anthony Bopp (1983) proposed that kerosene, a low-quality fuel used in home heating, was a Giffen
good. Schmuel Baruch and Yakar Kanai (2001) suggested that shochu, a Japanese distilled
beverage, could be a Giffen good. In both cases, the authors offered supporting econometric
evidence. However, this evidence is considered incomplete.
It is worth noting that a good may be a Giffen good at the individual level but not at the aggregate
level (or vice-versa). As shown by Hildenbrand's model, aggregate demand will not necessarily
exhibit any Giffen behavior even when we assume the same preferences for each consumer, whose
nominal wealth is uniformly distributed on an interval containing zero. This could explain the
presence of Giffen behavior for individual consumers but the absence in aggregate data.[15]

See also

Capital good

Consumer choice

Price elasticity of demand

Supply and demand

Ordinary good

Veblen good

Inferior good

Normal good

References

1. Masuda, E.; Newman, P. (1981). "Gray and Giffen Goods". The Economic Journal. 91 (364):
1011. doi:10.2307/2232507 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2232507) . JSTOR 2232507 (https://
www.jstor.org/stable/2232507) .

2. Stigler, George (1947). "Notes on the History of the Giffen Paradox". Journal of Political
Economy. 55 (2): 154. doi:10.1086/256487 (https://doi.org/10.1086%2F256487) .
JSTOR 1825304 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1825304) .

3. Marshall, Alfred (1895). Principles of Economics (http://www.econlib.org/library/Marshall/marP

14.html#Bk.III,Ch.VI) . Vol. III. Ch. VI, Para. III.VI.17.

4. Marshall, Alfred (1895). Principles of Economics.

 5. Arnott stated: 'Bargains [with investing] got there by inflicting pain and losses. Nobody wants
to double down on pain and losses. The result is that the stock market is a classic Giffen good.
A Giffen good is something where demanding [sic] increases as the price goes up. Common
examples are jewelry or fashion, high fashion clothes. A designer dress for $1,000 dollars isn’t
going to sell, a designer dress for $10,000 will. And same thing applies to the stock market.
Economists are reluctant to treat stocks and bonds as Giffen goods, but they are. Demand
goes up as the price goes up. It’s a little bit like if Tiffany’s had a banner sign saying post-
COVID sales, everything marked up 20% and people were breaking down the doors to get in
and Cartier across the street, post-COVID sales, everything marked down 20% and people think,
“Oh, they’ve got something wrong with their product. I’m not going in there.”' As quoted in The
Meb Faber Show, Episode #313: Rob Arnott, Research Affiliates, “Modern Monetary Theory
Does Not Work" (https://mebfaber.com/2021/05/19/e313-rob-arnott/) , May 19, 2021

6. Jensen, R. T.; Miller, N. H. (2008). "The impact of food price increases on caloric intake in
China" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3101574) . Agricultural Economics.
39 (1): 465–476. doi:10.1111/j.1574-0862.2008.00352.x (https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1574-08
62.2008.00352.x) . PMC 3101574 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC310157
4) . PMID 21625411 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21625411) .

7. Jensen, Robert; Miller, Nolan (2008). "Giffen Behavior and Subsistence Consumption" (https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964162) . American Economic Review. 97 (4):
1553–1577. doi:10.1257/aer.98.4.1553 (https://doi.org/10.1257%2Faer.98.4.1553) .
JSTOR 29730133 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/29730133) . PMC 2964162 (https://www.ncb
i.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964162) . PMID 21031158 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go
v/21031158) .

8. Kagel, John H.; Battalio, Raymond C.; Green, Leonard (1995). Economic Choice Theory: An
Experimental Analysis of Animal Behavior (https://archive.org/details/economicchoiceth0000ka
ge) . Cambridge University Press. pp. 25 (https://archive.org/details/economicchoiceth0000k
age/page/n42) –28. ISBN 978-0-521-45488-9.

9. Piros, Pinto, Harris, Christopher, Jerald, Larry (2013). Economics for Investment Decision Maker.
America: Wiley. ISBN 978-1-118-41624-2.

10. Dwyer, Gerald P. Jr.; Lindsay, Cotton M. (1984). "Robert Giffen and the Irish Potato". American
Economic Review. 74 (1): 188–192. JSTOR 1803318 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1803318) .

11. Kohli, Ulrich (1986). "Robert Giffen and the Irish Potato: Note". American Economic Review. 76
(3): 539–542. JSTOR 1813371 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1813371) .
12. Rosen, Sherwin (1999). "Potato Paradoxes". Journal of Political Economy. 107 (6): 294–313.
doi:10.1086/250112 (https://doi.org/10.1086%2F250112) . JSTOR 2990755 (https://www.jsto
r.org/stable/2990755) . S2CID 222454869 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:222454
869) .

13. Read, Charles (May 2013). "Giffen Behaviour in Irish Famine Markets: An Empirical Study" (htt
p://www.econsoc.hist.cam.ac.uk/docs/CWPESH%20number%2015%20May%202013.pdf)
(PDF). Cambridge Working Papers in Economic and Social History No. 15.

14. C. Read, ‘The Irish Famine and Unusual Market Behaviour in Cork’, Irish Economic and Social
History 44:1 (December 2017) pp. 3-18. [http://doi.org/10.1177/0332489317705461].

15. Hildenbrand, W (1983). "On the law of demand". Econometrica. 51 (997): 1018.
doi:10.2307/1912048 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1912048) . JSTOR 1912048 (https://www.j
stor.org/stable/1912048) .

Further reading

Abramsky, Sasha (October 17, 2005). "Running on Fumes" (https://web.archive.org/web/2008030

5134619/http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051017/abramsky) . The Nation. pp. 15–19.
Archived from the original (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051017/abramsky) on March 5,
2008. Retrieved October 8, 2005.

Jensen, Robert; Miller, Nolan (2008). "Giffen Behavior and Subsistence Consumption" (https://ww
w.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964162) . American Economic Review. 98 (4): 1553–77.
doi:10.1257/aer.98.4.1553 (https://doi.org/10.1257%2Faer.98.4.1553) . PMC 2964162 (https://w
ww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964162) . PMID 21031158 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.ni
h.gov/21031158) .

Baruch, Shmuel; Kannai, Yakar (2001). "Inferior Goods, Giffen Goods, and Shochu" (https://web.ar
chive.org/web/20120904212335/http://home.business.utah.edu/finsb/giffen.pdf) (PDF).
Economics Essays: 9–17. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-04623-4_3 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2F978-3-66
2-04623-4_3) . ISBN 978-3-642-07539-1. Archived from the original (http://home.business.utah.e
du/finsb/giffen.pdf) (PDF) on 2012-09-04.

Bopp, Anthony (1983). "The Demand for Kerosene: a Modern Giffen Good". Applied Economics. 15
(4): 459–467. doi:10.1080/00036848300000017 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F000368483000000
17) .

Masuda, Etsusuke; Newman, Peter (1981). "Gray and Giffen Goods". The Economic Journal. 91
(364): 1011–1014. doi:10.2307/2232507 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F2232507) .
 JSTOR 2232507 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2232507) .

Stigler, George (1947). "Notes on the History of the Giffen Paradox". Journal of Political Economy.
55 (2): 154. doi:10.1086/256487 (https://doi.org/10.1086%2F256487) . JSTOR 1825304 (https://
www.jstor.org/stable/1825304) .

Yamagishi, Jumpei; Hatakeyama, Tetsuhiro (2021). "Microeconomics of Metabolism: The

Warburg Effect as Giffen Behaviour" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC855818
8) . Bulletin of Mathematical Biology. 83 (12): 120. doi:10.1007/s11538-021-00952-x (https://doi.
org/10.1007%2Fs11538-021-00952-x) . PMC 8558188 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl
es/PMC8558188) . PMID 34718881 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34718881) .

External links

Alfred Marshall Principles of Economics Bk.III,Ch.VI in paragraph III.VI.17 (http://www.econlib.or

g/library/Marshall/marP14.html#Bk.III,Ch.VI)

The Last Word on Giffen Goods? (http://econwpa.repec.org/eps/ge/papers/9602/9602001.pdf)

Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20151208161735/http://econwpa.repec.org/eps/ge/pape
rs/9602/9602001.pdf) 2015-12-08 at the Wayback Machine

Giffen good (http://moneyterms.co.uk/giffen-good/)

What Do Prostitutes and Rice Have in Common? (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/1

2/16/what-do-prostitutes-and-rice-have-in-common/)