That's the title of a paper by Bailey Norwood, Glynn Tonsor, and myself that was just released by the journal, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.
We start the paper as follows:
A summary of the study and findings:
That's the title of a paper by Bailey Norwood, Glynn Tonsor, and myself that was just released by the journal, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.
We start the paper as follows:
A summary of the study and findings:
The journal Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy just published a special issue in which agricultural and applied economists provide their thoughts on how we might help tackle some of society’s most difficult problems and challenges. I co-authored one of the articles with Jill McCluskey. Here's the abstract:
Other contributions in the special issue include:
That's the tile of a new paper I co-authored with Brandon McFadden at University of Florida and Norbert Wilson at Tufts that was just released in a special issue of Food Policy, which is focused on genetically engineered food (aka GMOs).
In some ways, our paper is like three papers smushed into one: we tie several analyses together under one theme. Here's part of the motivation:
In addition to documenting whether concern for GMOs has increased over time (answer: they haven't), we study whether:
We find that people are most supportive of regulations that focus on the outcomes from plant breeding rather than focusing on the particulars of which breeding method was used. We also find that support or opposition to a GMO depends on who created the GMO. Finally, concerns about the safety of GMOs are related to consumers' perceptions of who benefits from the GMO. Here's one of the key figures.
Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy just published a paper I co-authored with Brenna Ellison entitled "Examining Household Food Waste Decisions: A Vignette Approach." Here is a summary of the paper:
In particular, each subject saw a description like the following (where they saw one of the values in each of the brackets):
I suspect you won't be too surprised to hear that "smell" had a significant effect on consumers' decisions to waste or not waste. Apparently food safety considerations are one key driver of household food waste decisions.
We also had another vignette surrounding the decision of whether to keep a leftover meal. The findings?
Multiple sources today reported an item in the president's budget that would replace a portion of the Supplemental Food and Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, aka "food stamps") with physical food deliveries. Here is Politico:
The proposal is being pitched as a government version of Blue Apron that will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. SNAP and consumer advocacy groups have expressed concern with the proposal; I haven't seen any overt advocates of the plan outside the administration.
Economists have long favored unconditional (e.g., cash) to in-kind (e.g., food) transfers. The basic idea is that an individual consumer has a better idea of what they'll like than an administrator deciding which foods to put in a box. In other words, for the same budget, a consumer will be happier with cash than an equivalent dollar amount of food because the former provides more flexibility and freedom than the later. This value of flexibility could, of course, be offset if the administrator could acquire foods at a substantially reduced price compared to the average food consumer. But, this presumes the government administrators are more skilled in food acquisition than the Amazons, Walmarts, and Krogers of the world (or that these companies are taking in excess profits that could be passed directly to consumers).
There is another aspect to this issue that doesn't seem to be getting much attention. In particular, at least for some people, it doesn't matter if you give them food or SNAP. Here is Southworth writing in 1945 when earlier versions of SNAP were being debated:
In short, if a household already plans to buy beans, it doesn’t matter whether the household is given beans or an equivalent amount of cash – the final outcome is the same.
But, what if the household wanted rice and not beans? Providing them beans means they are a little less happier than they would have been with an amount of cash (or SNAP benefits) equal to the beans that they then could use to buy rice.
Maybe the idea is that this version of the SNAP program would be more beneficial to U.S. farmers. But, these aid programs are hardly efficient forms of farm support. As I found in one analysis, for every $1 spent by taxpayers on SNAP, farmers benefit by only $0.01. If the idea is to support farmers, we'd be better off just sending them the dollar.
In the end, the purported benefits seem to hinge critically on the government's ability to deliver food at a price low enough that offsets the value of the loss of flexibility for the aid recipient.