Bacon causes cancer: Do consumers care?

In October 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released a report classifying processed meat as a type 1 carcinogen. The report prompted headlines and attracted immediate public attention, but the economic impacts remain unknown. In this paper, we investigate the impacts of the IARC report on selected processed meat prices and purchases using retail scanner data from US grocery stores. We compare changes in prices and sales of selected processed meat products to a constructed synthetic control group (using a convex combination of nonmeat food products). We find a significant decrease in bacon prices in the wake of the IARC report release, but we find no evidence of a sales reduction. We find no significant changes in price and sales for ham and sausage. The pattern of price and quantity changes are consistent with downward shifts in demand and outward shifts in supply for bacon and sausage following the release of the IARC report.

Economies of diversification and stochastic dominance analysis in French mixed sheep farms

Farm diversification is mainly driven by risk mitigation effects and economic gains related to complementarities between production activities. By combining these two aspects, we investigate diversification economies in a sample of French mixed sheep farming systems and rank these systems using stochastic dominance criteria. Partially diversified systems (Sheep-Grass, Sheep-Crop, Sheep-Landless) and fully diversified systems (Sheep-Grass-Crop-Landless) were evaluated. We find a high degree of diversification diseconomies in the sheep farming systems considered. The results also indicate that the fully diversified system is driven by its risk-reducing effects (including downside risk exposure) and that Sheep-Crop is the dominant system in terms of risk-adjusted returns.

Impact of public water supply unreliability on residential property prices in Marion County, West Virginia

Water supply unreliability in many public water systems stems from aging infrastructure. We measure unreliability by the issuance of boil water notices (BWNs) within one year prior to single-family residential sale observations. Using a spatial quantile regression framework on transactions between 2012 and 2017, we find statistically significant, negative relationships between BWNs and residential properties. The estimated impacts of unreliability on residential housing prices, however, are not uniform across the distribution of prices. Specifically, we find that BWNs have a larger impact on medium- to low-priced houses (at or below the 60 percent quantile) compared with high-priced houses. An aggregate marginal willingness-to-pay value of $4.2 million was computed for a one-day reduction in annual BWN throughout Marion County.

The determinants of racial disparities in obesity: baseline evidence from a natural experiment

This article uses baseline data from an observational study to estimate the determinants of racial and gender disparities in obesity. Samples of low-income workers in Minneapolis and Raleigh reveal that respondents in Minneapolis have lower body mass indices (BMIs) than respondents in Raleigh. There are large, statistically significant race and gender effects in estimates of BMI that explain most of the disparity between the two cities. Accounting for intersectionality—the joint impacts of being Black and a woman—reveals that almost all the BMI gaps between Black women in Minneapolis and Raleigh can be explained by age and education differences.

Coverage of National Priority List sites by the print media during the implementation of Superfund: the role of race and income

We review 1982–1984 articles identifying Superfund sites in three national newspapers. Articles almost never identify the race of nearby residents. Based on sites receiving disproportionate coverage, readers might conclude that Superfund generally affected white, working-class families, but results do not support this narrative. In a pooled sample, neither race nor income predicts the number of times a site gets mentioned. When the sample is partitioned by newspaper or by each newspaper's coverage of nearby sites, a positive relationship emerges between the proportion of Hispanic or nonwhite residents and the number of articles about a site. We discuss this apparent contradiction.

Strengthening producer organizations to increase market access of smallholder farmers in Uganda

Smallholder agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa is largely exposed to pervasive market failures, translating into missed opportunities and sub-optimal economic behavior. These failures can partly be traced to the importance of economies of scale in procuring inputs and marketing produce, where smallholders face disproportionately high transaction costs. Producer organizations could help to lessen transaction costs; however, only a few farmers in Uganda sell through them. We introduce two interventions aimed at promoting marketing via producer organizations: cash on delivery, and information on sales, and analyze their impacts in an RCT design: We find that providing cash on delivery increases the probability that a member chooses to sell through the group, and hence the volumes bulked by each group. This increase in volumes appears to have enabled groups to secure higher prices for their produce. No significant effect could be found for providing information on sales.

Building trust in rural producer organizations: results from a randomized controlled trial

Trust is considered an important factor for successful collective action in groups of smallholder farmers. A prime example is collective commercialization of agricultural produce through producer organizations. While previous research has focused on trust as an exogenous determinant of participation in groups, this article tests whether trust within existing groups can be improved using a training program. We conduct a cluster-randomized controlled trial in rural Senegal to identify the effects of training members and/or leaders with respect to commercialization on intragroup trust. Our design allows identifying both direct treatment effects of having participated in the training and spillover effects on farmers who did not partake. Looking at different measures of trust in leaders’ competence and motives and of trust in members, we find that participating in the training significantly enhances both trust in leaders and trust in members. For trust in leaders, we also find a strong spillover effect. Our findings suggest that relatively soft and noncostly interventions such as group training appear to positively affect trust within producer organizations.

Quantifying the structure of residential water demand in the United States: a Generalized Exact Affine Stone Index demand framework

We utilize a Generalized Exact Affine Stone Index system to evaluate the structure of residential water demand that recognizes demand interrelationship between residential and bottled water in the United States, allowing for precommitted consumption. Further, we address expenditure and price endogeneity by accounting for the supply side of the price determination mechanism. A significant substitutability relationship between residential and bottled water is found, while substantial precommitments are established in both residential and bottled water consumption. Residential demand becomes price-elastic once the precommitted level is reached. Finally, ignoring substitutability, precommitments, or endogeneity distorts the demand structure, resulting in erroneous policy implications.