SABIIA - Sistema Aberto e Integrado de Informação em Agricultura (Sabiia)

Bonanno, Alessandro; Chenarides, Lauren; Goetz, Stephan J..

Lack of access to nutritious and affordable food has become an important public policy issue in the U.S.: various interest groups are seeking to reverse a trend whereby certain areas lack larger, full-service grocery stores that provide “higher” quality foods. Based on game-theoretic findings suggesting that lack of food access can be an equilibrium outcome, we specify a model relating access to higher quality food stores to a vector of supply and demand factors, using seven years of county-level data for the contiguous U.S., and a constrained generalized ordered logit estimator. Our results suggest that demand side factors, especially market size (total income and SNAP funds) play an important role in determining food access, and that large food stores...

Tipo: Presentation

Palavras-chave: Food Access; Equilibrium; Food-Store Density; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Q18; R3; L81.

Ano: 2012

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/123196

Private Labels, Retail Configuration, and Fluid Milk Prices

Adult Obesity and Food Stores’ Density – Evidence from State-Level Panel Data

This paper investigates the impacts of store brands (i.e., private labels) and retail characteristics (scanners, deli, bakery, and pharmacy departments, ATMs, restaurant and store size) on fluid milk prices using 1,740 supermarket-level observations from four cities. Non-parametric results reveal that although private label milk initially exerts a procompetitive effect on milk prices, eventually the effect is to raise the prices of both manufacturers' brands and private labels. Econometric results further reveal that price differentials are larger for reduced-fat milk than for whole milk and that the more enhanced the retail configuration is, the higher milk prices are. Overall, the results attest to some degree of price discrimination by retailers through...

Tipo: Working or Discussion Paper

Palavras-chave: Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Industrial Organization.

Ano: 2004

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/25222

Bonanno, Alessandro; Goetz, Stephan J..

The association between types of food access and rising adult obesity rates is increasingly recognized, as a complement to the effects of declining physical activity. Previous studies have examined the effects on obesity of only a limited set of store types, such as grocery stores, fast food restaurants and big-box retailers, and they have ignored that certain behavioral factors, such as could play a role in the relationship between food access and obesity. This analysis includes a comprehensive array of food-providing establishments, including limited- and full-service restaurants controlling for fruit-and-vegetables (F&V) consumption (lagged temporally) using a panel data set for the continental U.S. states covering the period 1997-2005. The...

Wal-Mart’s Monopsony Power in Local Labor Markets

Palavras-chave: Adult Obesity; Food Access; Eating Habits; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Health Economics and Policy; D12; I18; R23.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/61341

This paper measures the degree of monopsony power exerted by Wal-Mart over retail workers using a dominant-firm model and data on contiguous U.S. counties where the company operates, presenting for the first time a measure of the anti-competitive behavior of the company. Empirical results show that Wal-Mart’s monopsony power over workers varies significantly across the country, being higher in rural counties, particularly in the south. For instance, Wal-Mart’s buying power index in labor markets in rural southern central states is estimated to be 5% or higher while the impact on northeastern states’ retail wages is negligible.

Food Access and Food Security – An Empirical Analysis

Palavras-chave: Labor and Human Capital.

Ano: 2008

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/6219

Bonanno, Alessandro; Li, Jing.

This paper analyzes the effect of access to different types of food outlets on households’ food insecurity levels. Two years (2004 and 2005) of Current Population Survey – Food Security Supplement data are matched with MSA-level data on store counts of Wal-Mart Supercenters, small food stores (small grocery stores and convenience stores), medium and large grocery stores, and convenience stores associated with gas stations. Endogeneity of food stores’ location is accounted for to eliminate spurious correlation between households’ food security status and food access. Preliminary results indicate that, before accounting for endogeneity bias, the presence of Wal-Mart supercenters appears to be associated to higher levels of households’ food insecurity, while...

Health Claims Regulation and Welfare

Palavras-chave: Food Security; Food Access; 2-Stage Residual Inclusion; Wal-Mart; Convenience Stores; Grocery Stores; Consumer/Household Economics; Food Security and Poverty; Industrial Organization; Q18; L81; P46.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/103218

Huang, Rui; Bonanno, Alessandro.

Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006, 20 December 2006, requires functional foods manufacturers operating in Europe to provide evidence that the health claims reported on the packaging are truthful. However, most applications reviewed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) have been rejected, leaving food manufacturers with the option of either selling products deprived of their claims or discontinuing their production. This paper analyzes changes in welfare (both producers’ and consumers’) that would occur if the implementation of Reg. (EC) No 1924/2006 resulted in a large-scale health-claim de-labeling of functional food products. To that end, we use one year (2007) of monthly scanner data of sales of conventional and functional yogurt in the Italian...

Competition Effects of Supermarket Services

Palavras-chave: Health claims regulation; EFSA; Welfare; Random coefficients; MPEC.; Agricultural and Food Policy; Demand and Price Analysis; Industrial Organization; Marketing; Q18; L66; M38.

Ano: 2011

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/103809

This paper investigates the effect of in-store services on retail food prices, supermarket competition, and demand using fluid milk as a case study. It is shown that higher-service supermarkets charge higher milk prices essentially because of an increase in market power due to differentiation of service offering. Results show that different types of services impact milk prices differently, that upscale food-retailers face stronger competition in newer services, and that service competition results in a trade-off for the consumer between the attractiveness of the enhanced retail configuration and the increase in prices.

Food Access, Eating Habits and Adult Obesity in Italy

Palavras-chave: Retailing; Pricing; Milk; Supermarkets; Agribusiness; L81; D40; L66.

Ano: 2007

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/9833

Bimbo, Francesco; Bonanno, Alessandro; Nardone, Gianluca.

Tipo: Presentation

Palavras-chave: Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety.

Ano: 2012

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/123978

FUNCTIONAL FOODS AS DIFFERENTIATED PRODUCTS

Bonanno, Alessandro.

Food products providing health benefits beyond nutrition, or functional foods, draw consumers’ attention and promise growth opportunities for innovator food manufacturers. European functional food manufacturers may be facing future challenges, mainly due to the European Union Regulation (EC) No.1924/2006 regulating food products’ health-claims. However, in spite of the interest shown by academics to understand the acceptance of these products no study exists that analyzes the profitability of functional foods. Using a relatively novel methodology – an adaptation of the LA/AIDS model by means of Pinkse Slade and Brett’s (2002) distance metric (DM) method – this article treats functional foods as differentiated products and provides estimates of demand and...

Is Wal-Mart a Monopsony? Evidence from Local Labor Markets

Palavras-chave: Functional Foods; Differentiated Products; Distance Metric; Yogurt; Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; Health Economics and Policy; L15; L25; L66.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/116420

This paper measures the degree of monopsony power exerted by Wal-Mart over retail workers using a dominant-firm model and data in the 48 contiguous U.S. states for counties where the company operates, presenting for the first time a measure of the company’s anticompetitive behavior. Empirical results show that Wal-Mart’s monopsony power over workers varies significantly across the country, being higher in non-metro and rural counties, particularly in the south. For instance, Wal-Mart’s buying power index in labor markets in rural southern and central states is estimated to be 5% or higher while the impact on northeastern states’ retail wages is negligible.

SNAP Efficacy and Food Access – A Nationwide Spatial Analysis

Palavras-chave: Wal-Mart; Monopsony power; Wages; Labor; Retailing; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Industrial Organization; Labor and Human Capital; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods; J42; L13; L81.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/51289

Bonanno, Alessandro; Ghosh, Gaurav S..

As the public expenditure for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - formerly the Food Stamp Program (FSP) - increases, improving the effectiveness of the policy becomes pivotal to limit further surges in public spending. Along with social stigma, transaction costs, associated in part to the accessibility and proximity to food outlets, are the main deterrent to program participation. This study presents an empirical assessment of the relationship between food access and FSP participation among eligible population. The analysis uses county-level data for the continental U.S., distinguished by different stores formats (grocery stores, convenience stores and a non-traditional, low-priced alternative, Wal-Mart Supercenters) accounting for the...

Wal-Mart, Oligopsony Power and Entry: an Analysis of Local Labor Markets

Palavras-chave: Food Stamps; Food Access; Spatial modelling; Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; Health Economics and Policy; Q18; L81; C21.

Ano: 2010

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/116437

Bonanno, Alessandro.

Wal-Mart, the largest retailer worldwide, has been suspected of exercising market power over input providers, both merchandise suppliers and workers. However, in spite of a growing body of literature investigating the beneficial economic impact of the company through its price-lowering effect, research analyzing the company’s economic impact over input suppliers is limited. This paper presents a general framework which can be used to investigate Wal-Mart’s market power over input suppliers, vis-à-vis a variation in input productivity, focusing on homogenous intermediate goods supplied locally. The model is general enough to account for incumbents’ reaction to Wal-Mart’s entry resulting in exit, entry and changes in the production technology. A simplified...

Some like it healthy: demand for functional products in the Italian yogurt market

Palavras-chave: Wal-Mart; Oligopsony power; Entry; Wages; Industrial Organization; Labor and Human Capital; L13; L81; J42.

Ano: 2009

URL: http://purl.umn.edu/49599

Bonanno, Alessandro.

Despite the significant interest shown by academics as to investigating the market of functional foods, little empirical research has used market data to infer on the characteristics of functional foods’ consumers via demand analysis. Using a discrete choice (nested-logit) model and scanner data of yogurt purchases in the Italian market, this paper analyzes the demand for both conventional and functional yogurts assessing also the role of health-related demographics as shifters. The empirical results show that, in the category analyzed, while higher prices are still a deterrent for the success of some functional products, drinkable functional yogurts appear successfully differentiated, benefitting from a relatively low own-price elasticity of demand. The...