Public Economics Commons^™

Good Food In The Neighborhood: Localizing Nutritious Food Access, Joseph Pool

Honors Program Theses

Given contemporary changes to federal budget priorities and recent challenges to federal food access funding, this research explores the potential benefits of entrusting state-level and municipal-level policymakers with food access policy. More specifically, this research suggests that “localizing” food access has the unique benefit of not just addressing the affordability of food, but the physical accessibility of it. As observed in the previous literature and expounded upon here, food provisioning requires consideration of nutrition, physical accessibility, and financial affordability. Programs that only address one of these priorities fail to adequately help people receive the food they need. Through policy analysis …

Envisioning The Role Of Community-Owned Stores & Aligning Federal Food Policies: A Participatory Approach To Food Security And Food Sovereignty In Sambaa K’E, Denendeh (Northwest Territories, Canada), Narayan Subramoniam

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Northern Indigenous communities have relied on traditional food systems for meaningful, nutritious diets since time immemorial. But many Indigenous communities in remote northern regions of Canada still face disproportionately elevated levels of food insecurity due to climate change radically altering the availability for traditional foods, colonial food policies imposing Western diets, and the high costs of transporting store-bought foods. Extreme weather events such as wildfires further isolate fly-in remote communities increasing both the costs of transporting store-bought foods and the difficulties of harvesting traditional foods. There are many examples of community-based initiatives for supporting traditional and locally grown foods, however, …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Understanding Rice Production Stagnation In The Philippines: Regional Evidence And Development Implications, Henry Bartelet, Alenn Jhulia D. Prodigalidad, Janelle S. Dy, Jan Gabriel N. Manzano

Quantitative Methods and Information Technology Faculty Publications

Despite decades of investment in agricultural research and rice development, the Philippines continues to face stagnation in domestic rice production. This persistent trend, occurring despite a sizable arable land base and large rural workforce, has contributed to the country’s growing reliance on rice imports to meet national food needs. In response, the government has implemented a tariff-based import system designed to fund domestic productivity improvements. While previous studies have explored the technical and environmental constraints affecting rice production, such as irrigation shortfalls, land degradation, and climate variability, few have examined recent national trends using regionally disaggregated data alongside qualitative insights. …

Non-Tariff Measures On Indonesian Tea Products: Do Sps And Tbt Impede Or Promote The Export?, Fikri Aldi Dwi Putro, Widyastutik Widyastutik, Nia Kurniawati Hidayat

Economics and Finance in Indonesia

Previous studies highlight the heterogeneous effects of Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) on international trade. This study identifies the enforcement of NTMs and examines the effects on the export performance of Indonesian tea products. This study employed an inventory (coverage ratio) approach and panel regression with the Poisson-Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) method. The results indicate that 31 out of 36 analyzed destination countries enforce NTMs, with Vietnam imposing the most prevalent ones. Furthermore, SPS measures substantially promote the export of Indonesian tea products, whereas TBT measures show no significant effect. Therefore, the government needs to provide incentives and harmonize the national Voluntary …

Recent U.S. Government Policy Literature On Critical And Strategic Minerals, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Critical and strategic minerals have become increasingly important in U.S. government civilian and military policymaking in recent years. This is demonstrated by the heavy use of such minerals in many critical civilian and military infrastructures. This work will discuss how this subject has been addressed in laws, presidential documents, and works by government agencies along with congressional oversight committees and support agencies. It will stress how the United States is heavily dependent on strategic minerals from adversarial foreign countries such as China and will examine U.S. efforts to increase its ability to produce such materials in the United States by …

Agrivoltaic Decision Tools For Perennial And Field Crop Farmers, Jill Fitzsimmons, Tae-Hyun Kim

Journal of Extension

This article describes a series of spreadsheet-based tools to help farmers estimate costs, revenues, and yields from agricultural production under different configurations of agrivoltaic installations for field and perennial crops. Crop-specific log books allow farmers to project changes in activity-level costs from the field due to agrivoltaic installations. The whole-farm tool helps farmers aggregate activity-level net returns up to the farm level to calculate projections of trade-offs between crop production with or without agrivoltaic installations. We present tools for lettuce and cranberries, but the tools are comprehensive and inclusive and so can be modified for other perennial and field crops.

U.S. Government Agency Podcasts, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Presents podcasts from U.S. Government agencies which can be discovered through the U.S. Government Publishing Office's Catalog of Government Publications. Agencies whose podcasts are presented include the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Peace Corps, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Government Accountability Office (GAO), National Park Service, Department of Justice, Federal Reserve System, and U.S. Naval War College.

Evaluating The Early Impacts Of The Snap Online Purchasing Pilot, Kyle Jones

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three chapters that evaluate how a change in the redemption of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits impacted grocery purchasing behavior and food consumption to provide some of the first estimates of the impacts from the pilot. The SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot (OPP) allowed recipients to use their benefits online for participating retailers which was initially planned for 8 participating pilot states with a few participating retailers but massively expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first two chapters evaluate how the SNAP OPP impacts grocery purchasing behavior with the first chapter evaluating before the COVID-19 pandemic and …

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

The Differential Impact Of 4ps On Child Labor Before And During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Hannah Grace Villaret, Joey Anastacio, Yohana B. Burgos, Lyka May Pauline Fernandez, Paulynne J. Castillo, Roberto Raymundo, Joel Q. Tanchuco

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Poverty is widely considered the root cause of child labor in the Philippines. Thus, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) was designed to alleviate poverty and reduce child labor through financial assistance, conditional on welfare investments like children’s education. Using 2017, 2019, and 2020 data from the Annual Poverty Indicators Survey (APIS), the study estimated the differential impact of 4Ps on child labor before and during COVID-19 across varying demographic, socio-economic, and locational characteristics. Results from the propensity score matching (PSM) and difference-in-differences (DID) model indicated that since cash transfers cannot fully offset the opportunity cost of children’s education, children …

U.S. Consumers’ Willingness To Pay For Raised Carbon-Friendly Beef: Moderation Effect Of Information And Consumer Characteristics, Mariam Ishaq

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Prospects For Valuation In Marine Decision Making In Europe, Rob Tinch, Stephen Hynes, Claire Armstrong, Wenting Chen

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

There is now high-level recognition that the UN Sustainable Development Goals can only be achieved if the decline of ecosystems and biodiversity can be halted and reversed. This will require effective control of ongoing pressures, meaningful protection and enforcement of protected areas, and significant investments in ecosystem restoration. This paper explores the possible use of economic valuation and appraisal in achieving these goals in marine systems and discusses the European marine policy instruments where they should have an important role The paper first briefly reviews the tools of economic valuation and appraisal for marine ecosystem management. A critique of the …

Carbon Emissions, Abatement, And Natural Disasters: Politics And Social Institutions, Ritika Khurana

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation empirically examines three issues related to renewable energy and international development: 1) The Political Economy of Solar Initiatives in the Sunshine State; 2) Climate Change, Natural disasters, and Institutional Integrity; and 3) Institutional Integrity and Carbon emissions.

In Chapter 2, I empirically examine the outcomes of two solar energy amendments that were on the ballot in Florida in 2016. One amendment exempts solar energy devices from ad valorem taxation of real estate property, effectively decreasing the cost of solar energy for those who adopt solar photovoltaic panels. The other amendment reaffirms the right of property owners to install …

Measuring Palatability As A Linear Combination Of Nutrient Levels In Food Items, Jeffrey S. Young

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

It well known that palatability and nutritional quality of foods and/or diets are viewed as being in tension with one another. While there exist multiple measures of healthiness, there are no such measures for tastiness. This gap limits the degree to which researchers can investigate this tension and its implications for dietary behavior and hence public health and nutrition policy. The scope of future work concerning the dietary behavior of Americans would expand greatly if researchers better understood consumers’ willingness to eat certain foods, which matters as much as recommending those foods for them to eat in the first place. …

Understanding Modern History Of International Food Law Is Key To Building A More Resilient And Improved Global Food System, Michael T. Roberts

Journal of Food Law & Policy

This article advocates the need for a history of the development of modern international food law and suggests an analytical approach to complement the chronicling of events. Comprehension of this history will help elucidate the evolution of a complicated modern global food system, including its resiliency and vulnerability as demonstrated by Covid-19, thereby providing valuable context for change in the system where needed. This essay makes the case for such a history in three parts. First, it briefly demonstrates the need for a historical perspective through a critical examination of a journal article that speaks to Covid-19 food security in …

Addressing Food Insecurity In The United States During And After The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Role Of The Federal Nutrition Safety Net, Sheila Fleischhacker, Sara N. Bleich

Journal of Food Law & Policy

Food insecurity has been a direct and almost immediate consequence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its associated ramifications on unemployment, poverty and food supply disruptions. As a social determinant of health, food insecurity is associated with poor health outcomes including diet related chronic diseases, which are associated with worst COVID-19 outcomes (e.g., COVID-19 patients of all ages with obesity face higher risk of complications, death). In the United States (US), the federal nutrition safety net is predominantly made up of the suite of 15 federal nutrition assistance programs that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers and …

Three Essays On Grocery Sales Taxes, Lingxiao Wang

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Grocery sales taxes represent a stable tax revenue stream for state and municipal government, but there is rare empirical evidence suggesting grocery taxes may adversely affect health. In addition, the how governments set grocery sales taxes is still unclear. Therefore, based on a novel national dataset of annual county and state-level grocery taxes from 2009 through 2016, the following three essays in the dissertation investigate the health impacts of grocery sales taxes and the causes of grocery sales taxes in a framework of tax competition.

In the first essay, we document the spatial and temporal variation in grocery taxes and …

Ways Forward In Energy Markets And The Environment, Jacob Nelson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Renewable energy sources have come to the forefront of energy production policy over the last twenty years. Studies of external and direct costs of both renewable and nonrenewable energy sources have contributed to growing understandings of ways in which these energy sources can be compared in a monetary context. Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) alongside international data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) among other sources, we have developed forecasts for the future costs, both direct and social, of each energy source as well as a difference-in-difference experiment to determine potential effects of state-level energy …

An Economic Analysis Of Using Retired Vessels To Create Artificial Reefs In Costa Rica, Josué González

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

The Republic of Costa Rica is a Central American country with only 0.03% of the world’s landmass, but 5% of the world’s biodiversity, making it a leading ecotourism destination. Ecotourism is one of the main sources of revenue for the country, but the degradation of coastal reefs has resulted in a significant loss of financial income for developing areas. As a result, many of these areas are searching for methods to revert the degradation of coral reefs.

Artificial reefs play an important ecological role in marine ecosystems due to their complexity and size. They help in the development of …

Recruitment And Retention Of Agriculture Teachers In The Southeast: An Empirical Analysis Of The Star Program., Kristie Guffey, Jeffrey Young

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

This article describes the collaborative efforts of various state and national agencies working together to recruit and retain agriculture teachers in the states of Kentucky, South Carolina, and Ohio. We contrast multiple measures of recruitment and retention in these states with those from the comparator states of Arkansas, West Virginia, and Alabama. The strategies outlined market to new agriculture teachers and maintain current teachers in the profession targeting work-life balance, emotional, physical and social health. These have been a focal point in the federal State Teach Ag Results (STAR) program, but the effects of participation in STAR on recruitment and …

Analysis Of The Impact Of Central Bank Of Nigeria's Agricultural Intervention Funds On The Economy, E. T. Adamgbe, M. C. Belonwu, E. R. Ochu, I. I. Okafor

Economic and Financial Review

This paper set out to investigate the impact of Central Bank of Nigeria's interventions on the agricultural sector within an economy-wide framework of general equilibrium modelling. The paper adopted a dynamic (recursive), two-sector general equilibrium model of the Nigerian economy with some modifications on the standard model developed by the Centre for Econometric and Applied Research (CEAR) and incorporated the contributions of the CBN's agricultural based interventions as increases in the stock of agricultural capital to have a more robust size of interventions into the agricultural sector. The SAM used for the CGE model analysis was derived from the updated …

British Government Information Resources, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

Provides an overview of British Government information resources. Contents include basic British economic and political background and information from British Government websites including the Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Brexit related material produced by British government agencies such as the Department for Exiting the European Union,, the Ministry of Defence, the National Museum of the Royal Navy, the Home Office Visas and Immigration Section, the Office of National Statistics, Her Majesty's Treasury, the British Parliament including parliamentary committees and research agencies, the website of Member of Parliament (MP) Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative-North East Somerset), a webcast of House …

What Drives Differences In Management Practices?, Nicholas Bloom, Erik Brynjolfsson, Lucia Foster, Ron Jarmin, Megha Patnaik, Itay Saporta-Eksten, John Van Reenen

Journal Articles

Partnering with the US Census Bureau, we implement a new survey of "structured" management practices in two waves of 35,000 manufacturing plants in 2010 and 2015. We fnd an enormous dispersion of management practices across plants, with 40 percent of this variation across plants within the same frm. Management practices account for more than 20 percent of the variation in productivity, a similar, or greater, percentage as that accounted for by R&D, ICT, or human capital. We fnd evidence of two key drivers to improve management. The business environment, as measured by right-to-work laws, boosts incentive management practices. Learning spillovers, …

Accounting For Agent Heterogeneity In Market And Policy Analysis, Konstantinos Giannakas

Zea E-Books Collection

doi:10.13014/K2416V8V

This book presents a multi-market framework of market and policy analysis that explicitly accounts for the empirically relevant heterogeneity in consumer preferences and producer characteristics. The explicit consideration of consumer and producer heterogeneity represents a significant departure from the representative consumer and producer that have been at the center of most of the literature on market and policy analysis, and enables the distributional impacts of changes in market conditions and policies to be fully identified. The framework is used to analyze the system-wide market and welfare impacts of a number of changes in market conditions (like changes in consumer …

Essays On Energy Economics And Environmental Policies, Janak R. Joshi

Economics ETDs

This dissertation contains three distinct empirical chapters in applied energy and environmental economics. Each chapter focuses on a unique set of research questions, methods, and data. The unifying motivation therein concerns the development of renewable or alternative low-carbon energy sources as a policy response to the challenges of climate change mitigation, local and regional environmental quality issues, and energy security concerns. Economic and environmental evaluation of the energy policies coupled with understanding energy use patterns is of paramount importance. Together, the empirical chapters focus on demand, supply, and policy aspects of energy markets in the United States (US).

First, Chapter …

Toxic Effects Of Lead Disposal In Water: An Analysis Of Tri Facility Releases, Patrick Koval

Economics Department Working Papers

Using county-level TRI data from 2003 to 2016, I find evidence that lead emissions in water adversely affect birth weights within the emitting county, especially with respect to the percentage of births considered low birth weight within that county (less than 2,500 grams). I find that a one percent increase in lead emissions per square mile increases the proportion of low birth weights by 0.27 percentage points. For a county with an average number of births in a particular year, this one percent increase in lead per square mile translates to an additional $475,000 in hospitalization costs from complications with …

International Energy Geopolitics, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Overview of international energy geopolitical trends. Emphasizes the importance of the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, East China Sea, Russia, and the Arctic to U.S. and international economic and strategic developments. Stresses the continuing importance of fossil fuels in domestic and international energy consumption, the variety of energy sources being used by various global regions, the potential for military conflict over access to natural resources, and how emerging energy leaders will determine global energy, environmental, and international security developments.

The Effects Of Food Security On Socioeconomic Mobility In The United States: A Case Study In Allendale County, South Carolina, Taylor St Clarke

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between food security – defined as accessibility to an affordable, nutritious, and sustainable source of food – and socioeconomic mobility in the continental United States. This thesis is primarily focused on the effects of food insecurity on both individuals and communities, examining the chronic long-term effects of such insecurity on areas known as “food deserts,” which are often given status as areas of persistent poverty. This research further examines the effects of a sustained poor diet, brought about by food insecurity, on the individual and overarching community in a food desert and how such a …

Economic Evaluation Of Coastal Land Loss In Louisiana, Stephen R. Barnes, Craig Bond, Nicholas Burger, Kate Anania, Aaron Strong, Sarah Weilant, Stephanie Virgets

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

Louisiana has lost approximately 1,880 square miles of land over the past eighty years. Projections suggest that in a future without action, the next fifty years could result in the loss of 1,750 additional square miles of land area. As land loss continues, a large portion of the natural and man-made capital stocks of coastal Louisiana will be at greater risk of damage, either from land loss or from the associated increase in storm damage. We estimate the replacement cost of capital stock directly at risk from land loss ranges from approximately $2.1 billion to $3.5 billion with economic activity …