31 research outputs found
Corporate Social Responsibility and Product Differentiation
We explore how the source of motivations for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) affects market outcomes. The first source is consumer-led; firms practice CSR because consumers value it. If one firm practices CSR it achieves a competitive advantage. If all firms practice CSR, market shares and price remain similar but profits fall, resulting in a Prisoner’s Dilemma. The other source is firm-led CSR that also generates prices, market shares, and revenue that are the same as when neither firms nor consumers care about CSR case, but firms allocate profit to equilibrate its marginal valuation of CSR and financial reward to owners
Tracking development assistance for health and for COVID-19: a review of development assistance, government, out-of-pocket, and other private spending on health for 204 countries and territories, 1990-2050
Background The rapid spread of COVID-19 renewed the focus on how health systems across the globe are financed, especially during public health emergencies. Development assistance is an important source of health financing in many low-income countries, yet little is known about how much of this funding was disbursed for COVID-19. We aimed to put development assistance for health for COVID-19 in the context of broader trends in global health financing, and to estimate total health spending from 1995 to 2050 and development assistance for COVID-19 in 2020. Methods We estimated domestic health spending and development assistance for health to generate total health-sector spending estimates for 204 countries and territories. We leveraged data from the WHO Global Health Expenditure Database to produce estimates of domestic health spending. To generate estimates for development assistance for health, we relied on project-level disbursement data from the major international development agencies' online databases and annual financial statements and reports for information on income sources. To adjust our estimates for 2020 to include disbursements related to COVID-19, we extracted project data on commitments and disbursements from a broader set of databases (because not all of the data sources used to estimate the historical series extend to 2020), including the UN Office of Humanitarian Assistance Financial Tracking Service and the International Aid Transparency Initiative. We reported all the historic and future spending estimates in inflation-adjusted 2020 US per capita, purchasing-power parity-adjusted US8. 8 trillion (95% uncertainty interval UI] 8.7-8.8) or 40.4 billion (0.5%, 95% UI 0.5-0.5) was development assistance for health provided to low-income and middle-income countries, which made up 24.6% (UI 24.0-25.1) of total spending in low-income countries. We estimate that 13.7 billion was targeted toward the COVID-19 health response. 1.4 billion was repurposed from existing health projects. 2.4 billion (17.9%) was for supply chain and logistics. Only 1519 (1448-1591) per person in 2050, although spending across countries is expected to remain varied. Interpretation Global health spending is expected to continue to grow, but remain unequally distributed between countries. We estimate that development organisations substantially increased the amount of development assistance for health provided in 2020. Continued efforts are needed to raise sufficient resources to mitigate the pandemic for the most vulnerable, and to help curtail the pandemic for all. Copyright (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd
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CONSUMER ACCESS, CHOICES, AND SAFETY IN THE U.S. RETAIL FOOD INDUSTRY
This dissertation explores three critical aspects of the U.S. retail food industry: food safety concerns, consumers’ access to healthy food, and consumer preferences of product attributes. The first chapter develops a product differentiation model with exogenous residential sorting and empirically tests whether low-income areas are more likely to be exposed to the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes in grocery store delis. Using data on the prevalence of Listeria monocytogenes collected from grocery store delis, I find that the marginalized communities in the U.S. are in high food safety risk. I argue that a store’s census-tract income is useful in predicting prevalence of L. monocytogenes, and thus low-income status should be considered as a risk factor.The second chapter utilizes machine-learning models—Random Forests to identify the factors that predict the access to healthy food in U.S. retail markets. I identify two binary measures from the modified Retail Food Environment Index: food deserts—tracts where no healthful-food retailers exist, and food swamps, where healthful-food retailers are outnumbered by unhealthy ones. My model optimally identifies ten demographic variables that detect food deserts and food swamps with prediction accuracy of 100% in sample and 72% out of sample. Thus, I argue that this model can be used to get a sensible prediction of access to healthful food retailers for any U.S. census tract. Results also suggest that food deserts and food swamps are intrinsically different and require separate policy attention.The third chapter analyzes consumers’ valuations of apple attributes using a discrete choice framework by combining retail scanner data with sensory panels. I estimate own- and cross-price elasticities of 21 open and club apple varieties. My findings suggest that consumers are consistent over time in their tastes for apple attributes and rank them in the order of firmness, sweetness, juiciness, crispness, aroma, and acidity. Consumers of club apples are loyal to their choices; they may pay higher prices but are less likely to switch an open variety. On the other hand, open varieties are less expensive and traditionally occupy greater retail shelf space, but are easily substitutable in case of price increase