Nutrition in Central Uganda - An Estimation of a Minimum Cost Healthy Diet

This study makes use of linear programming methodology to design a minimum cost diet for the Central Ugandan region. We used a set of constraints on recommended levels of daily nutrient intake, recommended proportions of groups of foods, as well as preferences and food availability in Central Uganda, to design a minimum cost healthy daily diet. Several models were considered, each forcing at least one of the following frequently consumed staple foods: matooke, cassava, and rice. We found that the minimum costs of the optimal diets were lowest in the planting season of March and highest in the harvesting season of December.Central Uganda, minimum cost diet, malnutrition, linear programming, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy,

Essays on Food Choices and Food Safety

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. November 2016. Major: Applied Economics. Advisors: Metin Çakır, Robert King. 1 computer file (PDF); ix, 133 pages.This dissertation concentrates on demand-side issues on food economics. Specifically, we investigate policy-relevant economic issues related to food safety and food choices in the United States. Due to the rising diet-related health issues in the U.S. population, understanding factors that impact food choices is of major importance. In the first essay we explore the impact of food shopping frequency on the healthfulness of food choices. Using household-level data, we find that a higher food shopping frequency leads to less healthful food purchases for at-home consumption. We further provide evidence that the negative effect is primarily because households purchase increasingly more temptation foods – savory and sugary processed items such as snacks and beverages – as they shop more frequently. Based on our results, we conjecture that limiting consumer exposure to temptation foods in grocery stores, and instead, increasing the visibility of fresh fruits and vegetables would lead consumers to purchasing healthier foods. The second and third essays focus on issues surrounding food safety in the United States, and the private sector’s incentive to invest in and enforce food safety standards. Specifically, we investigate consumers’ choices in the case of a recall of a branded product due to a food safety concern. If consumers switch to other products, then any losses due to one manufacturer recalling their product are externalized to all manufacturers of that product. This would provide manufacturers with incentives to cooperate in setting and enforcing food safety standards to avoid recalls and hence losses due to decreases in the demand for their product. Alternatively, if consumers switch to purchasing other brands of the recalled product, then losses are incurred only by the manufacturer that is directly affected by the recall. Manufacturers of other brands of the same product may in fact experience an increase in demand. In this scenario, manufacturers do not have strong incentives to jointly establish and enforce food safety standards. We use two alternative empirical methods to model a system of demand equations that allow measuring demand spillover effects due to a food recall: a multistage budgeting approach and a discrete choice modeling approach. Specifically, in the first approach we estimate an Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) and in the second approach we estimate a logit model. The second essay reports the results of the AIDS estimation. These results indicate that all competing brands of the recalled product experience positive spillover effects, hence benefiting from the recall of their rival brand. The third essay reports the results of the logit model estimation. The results from this model suggest that while most competing brands experience positive spillover effects, at least one competing brand is negatively affected. We discuss the advantages and limitations of each of the empirical approaches, and offer implications for food safety policy, specifically focusing on private sector incentives to cooperate in food safety initiatives

Are Travelers Willing to Pay a Premium to Stay at a “Green” Hotel? Evidence from an Internal Meta-Analysis of Hedonic Price Premia

A growing number of hotels provide “green” lodging for travelers with strong environmental preferences. Twelve states have developed certification programs to regulate these claims. After describing the new market for green lodging, we use data on prices and amenities of “green” and “brown” hotels in Virginia to estimate a hedonic model of hotel room pricing. We find that travelers can expect to pay a significant premium for a standard room in a green hotel. An internal meta-analysis is used to evaluate the robustness of this result to subjective econometric modeling decisions. Our results indicate a premium between $9 and$26

Disaggregation of Time in Household Food Production: Implications for the Goods-Time Elasticity of Substitution

The goal of this study is to estimate the goods-time elasticity of substitution in the process of home food production using the concept of Morishima elasticity of substitution. Our aim is to find out how the elasticity of substitution varies as time in home food production is disaggregated into the following categories: time in food preparation, time in clean-up, time in shopping for groceries, and time in traveling for grocery shopping. In order to conduct our empirical analysis, we make use of data from the American Time Use Survey matched with data from Eating and Health Module and Food Security Supplement.Morishima elasticity of substitution, input disaggregation, home food production., Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy,