Research
"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" Albert Einstein
"If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" Albert Einstein
My research has focused on two areas.
The first (primary) area of research focuses on the intersection of consumer economics and nutrition, mostly on food security, food banks, nutrition demand, and food policy.
The second area of my research focuses on how generic advertising impacts consumer demand.
A Welfare Analysis of Norways Export Promotion Programme for whitefish (with Henry Kinnucan and Ingrid Pettersen)
Norway recently increased the effective levy used to fund its export promotion programme for whitefish by 21 per cent. Study results suggest the intensified programme is welfare increasing. The net social gain, defined as the difference between the increase in economic surplus associated with the increased advertising and the decrease in economic surplus associated with the increased effective levy, is estimated at between $20 million and $136 million per year, for a best-bet estimate $60 million. The associated benefit–cost ratio (BCR), defined as the ratio of the aforementioned changes in economic surplus, is estimated at between 11 and 71, for a best-bet estimate of 32. The BCR is invariant to the supply elasticity. The invariance property is useful as it implies that the BCR can be estimated using strictly demand-side information; there is no need to estimate the supply side of the market. The current levy of 0.75 percent appears to be well below the levy that would maximize producer welfare.
Benefits of Agricultural R&D International Spillovers: The case of Aquaculture (with Henry Kinnucan and Nguyen)
International spillovers from research and development (R&D) arise when technology developed in one geopolitical region is adopted by another region, resulting in a divergence between social and private benefits from the technology. Applying this concept to aquacultural R&D, study results based on a partial equilibrium model of the global fish market suggest the magnitude of spillovers depends crucially on where the R&D occurs. When the R&D occurs in the developing world and assuming the cost savings to the developed world from the technology transfer equals half the cost savings experienced by the developing world, spillover effects are shown to be negligible. A basic reason is that developing countries account for over 90% of the global production of farmed fish. Consequently, technology “leakages” to the developed world have a modest effect on the global supply of farmed fish, and thus on the price and welfare effects of the technology transfer. In contradistinction, spillovers associated with technology leakages in the other direction, namely from the developed to the developing world, are shown to be both large and economically important. When spillover effects are taken into account the global annual gain ($4.9 billion) from a 2.5% import tax used to fund aquacultural R&D in the developed world is estimated to be 4.9 times larger than the domestic annual gain ($1.0 billion).
WTO must ban harmful fisheries subsidies ((Project led by Dr. Sumaila Rashid and there are 273 co-authors from 222 institutions in 44 countries across 6 continents)
To curb overfishing, biodiversity degradation and loss, and CO2 emissions, and to safeguard food and livelihoods, WTO members must prohibit fisheries subsidies that cause harm, such as those that lower the cost of fuel and vessel construction and those that provide price support to keep market prices artificially high. Sustainably managed wild fisheries support food and nutritional security, livelihoods, and cultures. Harmful fisheries subsidies—government payments that incentivize overcapacity and lead to overfishing—undermine these benefits yet are increasing globally. World Trade Organization (WTO) members have a unique opportunity at their ministerial meeting in November to reach an agreement that eliminates harmful subsidies. We—a group of scientists spanning 46 countries and 6 continents—urge the WTO to make this commitment.
Financial Liquidity Constraint and Food Insecurity (with Joel Cuffey and Shouli Zhao)
Households' limited accessibility of adequate quantity or quality of food due to insufficient household resources and money. Food insecurity is associated with an array of detrimental health outcomes including mental health problems, higher risks of certain birth defects, and diabetes. Since income is imperative to mitigate food insecurity, thus disruption in income affects the pattern of consumption. Enough short-term cash in hand can be a solution to mitigate food insecurity. Our study aims to answer three questions: 1) Is the scarcity of short-term cash in hand related with household food insecurity, independent of long-term income? 2) Does this relationship vary over race? 3) What factors explain racial heterogeneity? A few studies have explored the association between food security and household assets. However, assets might not fully capture liquidity constraints if households cannot borrow. In this study, we measure liquidity constraints more comprehensively by asking respondents directly about their ability to obtain money immediately through hypothetical scenarios. We leveraged a survey on the online Qualtrics panel to obtain data. Using the survey data, we estimated a linear probability model. We find that households are more likely to be food insecure if they are financially liquidity-constrained. Surprisingly, among black households, we find no relationship, suggesting racial heterogeneity in our study. Despite being unemployed and not having access to formal institutions to borrow money, the liquidity-constrained households can combat food insecurity. One reason might be their strong social networks, which help them avert food insecurity despite having inadequate cash on hand. Price is one of the important determinants that motivate food shopping decisions among black households. Financially constrained black households are more likely to be food insecure if they lack access to low-priced food items.
Does the Emergency Allotment of SNAP Benefits impact the food pantries? (with Joel Cuffey)
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides benefits to economically challenged households in the U.S. to mitigate food insecurity and hunger. The average benefit was around $240 per month prior to the COVID-19 (Richterman et al. 2023). At the time of the pandemic, the federal government introduced emergency allotments (EAs) to temporarily boost benefit amounts for households. The SNAP participants received an additional $95. However, these EAs were temporary and concluded in March 2023. 18 states terminated the benefits before March 2023. The design of the SNAP-EA program mandated the states to terminate the additional benefits if they ended their states declarations of emergency (Steffen and Kim 2024). The expiration of EA is followed by the increase in the likelihood of food insufficiency and an elevated risk of financial difficulty in paying household expenses (Dasgupta and Plum 2023). Economic and food hardships may lead a household to rely on a food pantry for assistance. Prior literature has looked at food insufficiency, but did not investigate food pantry demand. This state-level variation in the expiration of the EAs allows us to evaluate the demand of the individuals served by the food pantries.
We leverage a food pantry caseloads data from a large food bank, in the Southeast U.S. The data contains information on the caseloads of food pantries across three states: Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. The data has county identifiers which helps follow approximately 1,200 unique food pantries for each county and month. Our data captures the time frame before and after COVID, 2017 to 2023 for each month. We aggregated the data to the county-month level of each state. We identified four measures of caseloads (individuals assigned to each food pantry) of the food pantries in each county and month. The measures are classified as – total number of young individuals (18 years or less), total number of individuals, total number of individuals who receive food from the pantry more than once a month, and total number of old individuals (60 years or more).
The timeline of the termination of the SNAP-EA temporary benefits varies across the states the three states in our analysis. Although our aim to evaluate impact of termination of EA benefits on the demand of food pantries in each state prompts a difference-in-difference analysis, we choose to use synthetic control. The termination of EAs in three states is disparate in timing. For instance, as the benefits ended for Florida and Mississippi before Alabama, we have a unique treatment, however, we cannot have Florida and Mississippi as clear control groups as they were treated earlier, and the pre-trends do not align well. This leads us to use synthetic control instead of a natural difference-in-difference method. We also controlled for the county-month unemployment rate, obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Preliminary results suggest that the cut to the EA has led to increased demand for food pantries across the three states. Note that Florida and Mississippi terminated the EA program in July 2021 and December 2021, respectively. Whereas, in Alabama, the program was terminated in March 2023. As the allotment in Florida and Mississippi ended much earlier than in Alabama, the impact was significantly greater on demand for food pantries in these two states – possibly due to their proximity to the pandemic’s economic aftermath. The EA expiration increased older individual caseloads of food pantries. Further, the increase in caseloads due to the EA expiration is largest in Mississippi, the poorest of the states under consideration.
We expect this study to generate discussion on the following topics. First, the Emergency Allotment of money brought a change in the SNAP benefits amount during the pandemic. The EA played a pivotal role in reducing food insufficiency when people lost their jobs and faced uncertainty in their consumption. We expect to generate discussion about the EA payments and the best strategies for analyzing the effects of these payments. Second, the SNAP benefits were temporary, and their termination varied across the states. We thus expect a discussion on the association between the Emergency Allotment payments and food insecurity and health. Third, we expect discussions on the role of food pantries in addressing food insecurity and hunger. Fourth, we have a novel dataset. The synthetic control method has the potential to generate discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of the estimation with the county-level food pantry caseloads data set.
Household Fish Consumption Pattern and Food Security in Bangladesh (with Madan Dey)
Aquaculture contributes to the overall increase in fish consumption. The richest urban households are substituting fish with poultry and poultry eggs. Owing to status bias, rich urban households do not consume low-cost aquaculture species such as exotic carps. Production of tilapia, pangasius has gone up through aquaculture. As a result, their prices are either stable or decreasing as their availability has increased. On the other hand, for capture species, production remained the same or declined. As the supply is constricted, the prices have increased, affecting the affordability and consumption of the poorest households. The study sheds light on the productivity improvements in fish across species driven by aquaculture and how these improvements restore national food security.
Estimation of food demand and nutrient elasticities: A disaggregated analysis of the Bangladesh household income and expenditure survey of 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2016
We investigate the shifts in the consumption patterns of fish and other animal-derived protein sources have shifted across income groups and geographic regions in Bangladesh. Our study answers the research question: How do socioeconomic status and urban–rural divides shape the changing dietary patterns, and what role does aquaculture play in these transitions? Using the nationally representative Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) data sets of 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2016, our study employs a two-stage empirical approach using the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) model to estimate household demand across five aggregated protein categories—fish, meat, mutton, poultry, and poultry eggs—and disaggregated analysis across fifteen fish species. We apply a censored demand system with Probit selection to account for zero consumption in certain households. Our findings illustrate an overall increase in fish consumption with an uneven growth. The fish consumption is increasing among poorer and rural households while decreasing among the rich urban households. The development of aquaculture especially of species, that include pangasius, tilapia and exoptic carps, has contributed to greater affordability and accessibility of fish among poorer rural households. On the other hand, consumption of capture fish has declined, partly due to constrained natural resources like ponds and consequent increase in prices. Our study also demonstrates a steady increase in the consumption of poultry and egg consumption across income groups, indicating a shift in the dietary composition. Our findings highlights the significance of inclusive agricultural innovation like aquaculture in enhancing nutritional security.
Estimation of the effects of generic advertising on market demand: An ADL Approach (with Henry Kinnucan)
The advantages of the autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) model for estimating the effects of generic advertising on market demand are evaluated by applying the model and attendant methods to data used in a recent study of Norway’s export promotion program for whitefish. The dynamic specification differed greatly depending on model selection criteria (Akaike Information, Hannan-Quin, Schwarz, and Adjusted R2). Despite this, there was little to choose between the specifications in terms of the estimated long-run demand elasticities. The estimated short-run elasticities differed among the specifications, with the model selected by the Hannan-Quin criterion indicating a more elastic response to income than the model selected by the Schwarz criterion. The bounds test for cointegration, a special feature of the ADL approach, proved useful in distinguishing between the appropriateness of quantity- and price-dependent specifications of the demand equation. Tests for weak exogeneity of the regressors indicated adjustments in quantity are 5.5 times more important than adjustments in price in resolving dynamic disequilibria caused by random (monthly) shocks to long-run demand.
Third-generation biofuels can mitigate the ongoing "food vs fuel" debate. The production of feed stocks of first- and second-generation biofuels requires agricultural lands that are used for producing food crops. Owing to lack of land, the supply of food crops is constrained, and raises the prices of food. Third- generation biofuels are more sophisticated than the previous generations. The feed stocks of the third-generation biofuels can be grown on ponds, aquatic places and thus do not occupy the agricultural lands. Thus, they do not inhibit the production of food crops.