Identifying Supply and Demand Elasticities of Agricultural Commodities: Implications for the US Ethanol Mandate

By Michael J. Roberts and Wolfram Schlenker

American Economic Review, October 2013

We present a new framework to identify supply elasticities of storable commodities where past shocks are used as exogenous price shifters. In the agricultural context, past yield shocks change inventory levels and futures prices of agricultural commodi...

The Intergenerational Correlation of Consumption Expenditures

By Kerwin Kofi Charles, Sheldon Danziger, Geng Li, and Robert Schoeni

American Economic Review, May 2014

Using data recently collected by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that the intergenerational correlation in expenditures is no larger than that in income, suggesting limited intra-family risk-sharing. On the other hand, even after controlling f...

Promoting Healthy Choices: Information versus Convenience

By Jessica Wisdom, Julie S. Downs, and George Loewenstein

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2010

Success in slowing obesity trends would benefit from policies aimed at reducing calorie consumption. In a field experiment at a fast-food sandwich chain, we address the effects of providing calorie information, mimicking recent legislation, and test an...

Consumer Shopping Behavior: How Much Do Consumers Save?

[Symposium: Price Variation for Households]

By Rachel Griffith, Ephraim Leibtag, Andrew Leicester, and Aviv Nevo

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2009

This paper documents the potential and actual savings that consumers realize from four particular types of purchasing behavior: purchasing on sale; buying in bulk (at a lower per unit price); buying generic brands; and choosing outlets. How much can and d...

Agricultural Biotechnology: The Promise and Prospects of Genetically Modified Crops

[Symposium: Agriculture]

By Geoffrey Barrows, Steven Sexton, and David Zilberman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2014

For millennia, humans have modified plant genes in order to develop crops best suited for food, fiber, feed, and energy production. Conventional plant breeding remains inherently random and slow, constrained by the availability of desirable traits in cl...

The Missing Food Problem: Trade, Agriculture, and International Productivity Differences

By Trevor Tombe

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2015

Agriculture in poor countries has low productivity, high employment, and negligible trade flows relative to other sectors. These facts motivate a multisector, open-economy view of international productivity differences. With a quantitative multicountry mo...

Making Famine History

By Cormac Ó Gráda

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2007

This paper reviews recent contributions to the economics and economic history of famine. It provides a context for the history of famine in the twentieth century, which is unique. During the century, war and totalitarianism produced more famine deaths ...

Does Public Assistance Reduce Recidivism?

By Crystal S. Yang

American Economic Review, May 2017

Under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, individuals convicted of drug-related felonies were permanently banned from receiving welfare and food stamps. Since then, over 30 states have opted out of the fed...

Is the Food And Drug Administration Safe And Effective?

[Symposium: Regulatory Economics]

By Tomas J. Philipson and Eric Sun

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2008

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provides public oversight of the safety and efficacy of drugs; medical devices; biologics like vaccines and blood products; cosmetics; radiation-emitting electronic products; veterinary products...

The Demand for Food of Poor Urban Mexican Households: Understanding Policy Impacts Using Structural Models

By Manuela Angelucci and Orazio Attanasio

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2013

We use Oportunidades, a conditional cash transfer to women, to show that standard demand models do not represent the sample's behavior: Oportunidades increases eligible households' food budget shares, despite food being a necessity; demand for food and...

Jonathan James on the formation of dietary habits

[Page]

How malleable are dietary habits in childhood and later in life?

Home security

[Research Highlight]

January 25, 2018

How much did unemployment benefits stabilize the housing market during the Great Recession?

When less is more

[Research Highlight]

February 06, 2018

Why would a five-star restaurant not want to disclose a positive inspection score?

What's best for the baby

[Research Highlight]

March 22, 2018

The AEA interviews Maya Rossin-Slater and Petra Persson about the long-term impact of maternal stress during pregnancy.

A puzzling success

[Research Highlight]

April 05, 2018

An entrepreneurship program in Chile worked, but not as expected.

From tax credits to college credits

[Research Highlight]

May 01, 2018

Tax refunds can boost college enrollment among low-income families.

A better understanding of food insecurity

[Page]

A larger share of minorities lack access to healthy food than whites. But the severity of that poor access matters, too.

Explanation of benefits

[Research Highlight]

September 18, 2018

Are policymakers providing enough information about social programs?

Mental accounting and grocery shopping

[Research Highlight]

January 17, 2019

Food stamps are designed to put food on the table. But do they work?

As farmers go, so goes the nation

[Research Highlight]

March 20, 2019

How did agriculture help the US recover from the Great Depression in the spring of 1933?