Are We #StayingHome to Flatten the Curve?

The recent spread of COVID-19 across the U.S. led to concerted efforts by states to ``flatten the curve" through the adoption of stay-at-home mandates that encourage individuals to reduce travel and maintain social distance. Combining data on changes in travel activity with COVID-19 health outcomes and state policy adoption timing, we characterize nationwide changes in mobility patterns and isolate the portion attributable to statewide mandates. We find evidence of dramatic nationwide declines in mobility prior to adoption of any statewide mandates. Once states adopt a mandate, we estimate further mandate-induced declines between 2.1 and 7.0 percentage points across methods that account for states' differences in travel behavior prior to policy adoption. In addition, we investigate the effects of stay-at-home mandates on changes in COVID-19 health outcomes while controlling for pre-trends and observed pre-treatment mobility patterns. We estimate mandate-induced declines between 0.13 and 0.17 in deaths (5.6 to 6.0 in hospitalizations) per 100 thousand across methods. Across 43 adopting states, this represents 23,366-30,144 fewer deaths (and roughly one million averted hospitalizations) for the months of March and April - which indicates that death rates could have been 42-54% higher had states not adopted statewide policies. We further find evidence that changes in mobility patterns prior to adoption of statewide policies also played a role in reducing COVID-19 mortality and morbidity. Adding in averted deaths due to pre-mandate social distancing behavior, we estimate a total of 48-71,000 averted deaths from COVID-19 for the two-month period. Given that the actual COVID-19 death toll for March and April was 55,922, our estimates suggest that deaths would have been 1.86-2.27 times what they were absent any stay-at-home mandates during this period. These estimates represent a lower bound on the health impacts of stay-at-home policies, as they do not account for spillovers or undercounting of COVID-19 mortality. Our findings indicate that early behavior changes and later statewide policies reduced death rates and helped attenuate the negative consequences of COVID-19. Further, our findings of substantial reductions in mobility prior to state-level policies convey important policy implications for re-opening.Take Away Link https://are.berkeley.edu/sites/are.berkeley.edu/files/PolicyTakeAway_Web.pd

Food Store Choice of Poor Households: A Discrete Choice Analysis of the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey

Policymakers are pursing initiatives to increase food access for low-income households. However, due in part to previous data deficiencies, there is still little evidence supporting the assumption that improved food store access will alter dietary habits, especially for the poorest of U.S. households. This article uses the new National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) to estimate consumer food outlet choices as a function of outlet type and household attributes in a multinomial mixed logit. In particular, we allow for the composition of the local retail food environment to play a role in explaining household store choice decisions and food acquisition patterns. We find that (1) households are willing to pay more per week in distance traveled to shop at superstores, supermarkets, and fast food outlets than at farmers markets and smaller grocery stores, and (2) willingness to pay is heterogeneous across income group, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation, and other household and food environment characteristics. Our results imply that policymakers should consider incentivizing the building of certain outlet types over others, and that Healthy Food Financing Initiatives should be designed to fit the sociodemographic composition of each identified low-income, low-access area in question

Empirical Evidence on the Role of Non Linear Wholesale Pricing and Vertical Restraints on Cost Pass-Through

How a cost shock is passed through into final consumer prices may relate to nom-inal price stickiness and rigidities, the existence of non adjustable cost components, strategic mark-up adjustments, or other contract terms along the supply distribution chain. This paper presents a simple framework to assess the potential role of non linear pricing contracts and vertical restraints such as resale price maintenance or wholesale price discrimination in the supply chain in explaining the degree of pass-through from upstream cost shocks in the ground coffee category to downstream retail prices. We do so in the German coffee market where both upstream and downstream firms make pricing decisions allowing for non linear pricing and vertical restraints. Using counter-factual simulations of an upstream coffee cost shock, we find that the existence of resale price maintenance between manufacturers and retailers increases pass through rate by more than 10 points relative to the case when this assumption is not allowed with non linear pricing or when double marginalization along the distribution chain is present. The intuition for our findings is that resale price maintenance restrictions make it less possible for retailers to perform strategic mark-up adjustments when faced with a cost shock. We also find that the larger the simulated cost shocks or the less concentrated upstream sector, and also when faced with less elastic demands, the larger the role of vertical restraints in preventing retailers to perform strategic mark-up adjustments, and thus the higher the pass-through increases

Reduced Form Evidence on Belief Updating under Asymmetric Information - The Case of Wine Expert Opinions

We estimate the effect of revealing expert opinion labels on wine product purchases through a field experiment where a random subset of wine products within the con- sumers' retail shelf choice set are labeled in the treatment store. We use a detailed weekly product level panel scanner data set for labeled and unlabeled wines in the treatment and comparable control stores before and after the implementation of a product-level labeling field experiment. We combine the scanner data with additional information on the characteristics of each product, such as brand, varietal, region of production, and price to estimate the average and heterogeneous effects of the field experiment on wine consumption. Consistent with earlier work, we find there to be a positive and significant overall average effect and that demand increases more for higher score wines than for lower score wines. We advance the literature with the following: one, higher scores matter more for prices in the lower quartile of the overall wine price distribution whereas demand does not move for the higher priced wine quartile, once quality is revealed; the result is consistent with pre treatment consumer behavior where consumers infer high quality for high prices. Two, we find positive spillover effects of this experimental treatment within brand for untreated wines as the displayed average score of the wine brand increases. However, we also obtain negative spillover effects for untreated wines that belong to intensively treated brands

Reduced Form Evidence on Belief Updating under Asymmetric Information - The Case of Wine Expert Opinions

We estimate the effect of revealing expert opinion labels on wine product purchases through a field experiment where a random subset of wine products within the con- sumers' retail shelf choice set are labeled in the treatment store. We use a detailed weekly product level panel scanner data set for labeled and unlabeled wines in the treatment and comparable control stores before and after the implementation of a product-level labeling field experiment. We combine the scanner data with additional information on the characteristics of each product, such as brand, varietal, region of production, and price to estimate the average and heterogeneous effects of the field experiment on wine consumption. Consistent with earlier work, we find there to be a positive and significant overall average effect and that demand increases more for higher score wines than for lower score wines. We advance the literature with the following: one, higher scores matter more for prices in the lower quartile of the overall wine price distribution whereas demand does not move for the higher priced wine quartile, once quality is revealed; the result is consistent with pre treatment consumer behavior where consumers infer high quality for high prices. Two, we find positive spillover effects of this experimental treatment within brand for untreated wines as the displayed average score of the wine brand increases. However, we also obtain negative spillover effects for untreated wines that belong to intensively treated brands

Learning, Forgetting, and Sales

Sellers of almost any product or service rarely keep their prices constant through time, and frequently offer price discounts or sales. This paper investigates an explanation of sales as a way for uninformed consumers to be willing to experience the product, and learn about its fit, and where informed consumers may forget about (or change) their preferences. We investigate the role of the rate of forgetting on the timing between sales, and of the rate of learning and menu costs on the length of a sale. We also investigate the effect of a seller carrying multiple products on the pattern of sales. Using price series from supermarket categories, and given the assumed simplified preference structure, we obtain empirical estimates of the rates of learning and forgetting, and of the other model parameters

Learning, Forgetting, and Sales

Sellers of almost any product or service rarely keep their prices constant through time, and frequently offer price discounts or sales. This paper investigates an explanation of sales as a way for uninformed consumers to be willing to experience the product, and learn about its fit, and where informed consumers may forget about (or change) their preferences. We investigate the role of the rate of forgetting on the timing between sales, and of the rate of learning and menu costs on the length of a sale. We also investigate the effect of a seller carrying multiple products on the pattern of sales. Using price series from supermarket categories, and given the assumed simplified preference structure, we obtain empirical estimates of the rates of learning and forgetting, and of the other model parameters