THE EFFECT OF FOOD STAMPS ON SPENDING FOR GROCERY PRODUCTS

We constructed demographic profiles of each market area by aggregating circa-1990 county US census data. We constructed a measure for market level food stamp benefits using 1990 county-level food stamp benefit data supplied by the USDA. This is the key explanatory variable in regressions in which sales of many specific foods and food aggregates are regressed on food stamp benefits and a large number of demographics, including a measure of poverty. The percent of grocery sales accounted for by food stamps ranged from less than two in the Boston area to more than ten in Shreveport. The primary interest is to evaluate the extent to which differences in food stamp usage across market areas alters the relative sales of grocery products. Because food stamps are a food-specific increase in income, we might expect a shift into more desirable, income-elastic grocery categories, perhaps more nutritious ones. We examine major food categories and find effects in the expected direction, in some cases significant. Focusing on nutrition, we examine sales of particular cereal brands, for which we have detailed sales and nutrition content data. No strong impacts are found. The second interest is the food buying habits of low income buyers in general and food stamp users in particular. It is commonly felt that low income households are necessarily more adroit food shoppers and will tend to buy more economical versions of their choices. However, there is little evidence of this. Indeed, it has been repeatedly found that low income buyers are less likely to substitute private labels goods for their branded counterparts. We study the role of food stamp and poverty in differences across markets on private label share of 71 grocery categories. A recent study by Gundersen and Oliveira might suggest that food stamp users are more likely to watch the food budget than are low income nonusers, suggesting different effects. Essentially this is what is found, for the ceteris paribus impact of poverty is to reduce sales of private label products, but if anything those using food stamps tend to buy them.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Program simplification as a means of approximating undecidable propositions

We describe an approach which mixes testing, slicing, transformation and formal verification to investigate speculative hypotheses concerning a program, formulated during program comprehension activity. Our philosophy is that such hypotheses (which are typically undecidable) can, in some sense, be `answered' by a partly automated system which returns neither `true' nor `false' but a program (the `test program') which computes the answer. The motivation for this philosophy is the way in which, as we demonstrate, static analysis and manipulation technology can be applied to ensure that the resulting test program is significantly simpler than the original program, thereby simplifying the process of investigating the original hypothesi

CONVENIENCE, ACCESSIBILITY, AND THE DEMAND FOR FAST FOOD

This study explores the growth in demand for fast food. A distinguishing characteristic of fast food is its convenience; in today's pervasive marketplace, consumers need not travel far to find a fast food outlet. This greater availability translates into a decrease in the full price of obtaining a meal, which contributes to greater consumption. Market-level data are used to estimate demand equations in two time periods, incorporating changes in availability as well as prices, income, and various demographic characteristics. Our findings show that greater availability has led to increased consumption. Failure to account for these types of marketplace changes could lead to incorrect inferences regarding the factors responsible for the industry growth.Demand and Price Analysis,

The Impact of Demographics, Market Characteristics, and Prices on the Consumption of Food-Away-From-Home

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Consolidated Markets, Brand Competition, and Orange Juice Prices

This paper examines how consolidation in the marketing system affects prices for orange juice. We isolated the pricing behavior of brand marketers, wholesalers, and retailers by observing the retail prices for specific orange juice products, including leading national brands and private label brands, in 54 U.S. markets over a 1-year period. The data provided little compelling evidence that consolidated markets engaged in non-competitive pricing behavior. Increased brand competition, particularly between private labels and leading national brands, did, however, appear to lower average market prices.consumer demographics, national brands, orange juice, price behavior, private labels, wholesaler concentration, retailer concentration, Demand and Price Analysis, Industrial Organization,

The Economics of Reducing Package Size: Consumer response and returns to manufacturers.

Marketing, Production Economics,

A policymakers' guide to economic forecasts

Forecasting ; Economic policy

PORBS: A parallel observation-based slicer

Abstract—This paper presents PORBS, a parallelised observation-based slicing tool. The tool itself is written in Java making it platform independent and leverages the build chain of the system being sliced to avoid the need to replicate complex compiler analysis. The target audience of PORBS is software engineers and researchers working with and on tools and techniques for software comprehension, debugging, re-engineering, and maintenance