Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy最新文献

We study the impact of providing consulting services and major capital infusions to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the food sector in Kenya. We exploit a quasi-experimental design that matches treated firms with comparable firms that applied for the same support but were just short of scoring sufficient points to receive this support. Using mixed methods, this quantitative analysis is supplemented by in-depth qualitative interviews, which provide further insights into the workings of the program. The program helped SMEs launch new products and increased numbers of employees. Interviewees described higher sales resulting from the major capital infusions they received.

This research simulates the impact on tax liabilities of five tax provisions that provide benefits to farm households by race and ethnicity. Using pooled data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (2017–2021), we find that, relative to White non-Hispanic principal operator farm households, certain business tax benefits are less prevalent and of lower value for Hispanic, African American, and Native American principal operator farm households due to differences in income and investment levels. Household tax credits are significantly higher for Hispanic and Native American principal operator farm households and Asian principal operator farm households have significantly higher total tax benefits from the five provisions examined.

By applying Resilience Index Measurement Analysis to data from Tajikistan, this paper measures food insecurity resilience capacity. Another objective of this paper is to construct and integrate coping strategies into resilience discussions. The final objective is to analyze the role of resilience capacity and coping strategy in food security with an Instrumental Variable approach. Our results generally confirm that resilience and coping strategies increase food security, determined by food expenditure, household adequacy of fruit and vegetable consumption, and household food expenditure share. Moreover, resilience capacity has a moderating role in mitigating negative impacts of shocks on food security.

This study compares financial characteristics of U.S. beef cow-calf farms by race and highlights potential challenges faced by minority farms based on the historical context in which they operate. We find that, in 2018, factors related to farm size and inefficiencies in generating returns contributed to racial disparities in the profitability of beef cow-calf farms. Relative to White cow-calf farms, on average, African American and Native American farms had less acreage, value of production, and net farm income but a higher share at financial risk due to inefficiencies. More research is needed to understand racial differences in farm financial performance.

We study the effectiveness of the Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative (MRBI) in reducing nitrogen pollution in surface water bodies. We use a Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder (KOB) counterfactual decomposition method to quantify the role of income and policy in reducing nitrogen pollution in waterbodies. Our results show that the MRBI policy for the 2012 cohort of implemented watersheds across five states (Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, and Tennessee) experienced a 43% reduction in nitrogen concentrations when comparing the 2009–2011 pre-treatment period to the 2012–2018 post-treatment period. Decomposition results show that 79% of the improvement in water quality from policy treatment is derived from an endowment effect, driven mainly by location-fixed effects that include cross-sectional mean differences in income, among other characteristics. Results also show that 21% of differences are derived from the coefficient effect or differences in the response of policy-treated watersheds compared to a set of control watersheds.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the cornerstone food assistance program in the United States and has been shown to reduce the risk of food insecurity. Most research on the causal effect of SNAP on food insecurity relies on the 12-month food insecurity scale along with usage of SNAP at any point during the year. However, recent social surveys ask about experiences with food insecurity in the 30 days prior to the survey. In this paper, we examine whether similar protective effects of SNAP against food insecurity are obtained whether using the 30-day or 12-month food insecurity scale using the December Supplement of the Current Population Survey for 2002–2019. Results indicate comparable average treatment effects of SNAP in mitigating food insecurity across both 30-day and 12-month reference periods.

Persistent malnutrition and food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa demand creative experimentation beyond conventional financing and interventions. Impact investing merits consideration. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) shape diets and health outcomes in Africa and may present an investment opportunity. The Nutritious Food Financing Facility (N3F) aims to harness blended impact investing for improved nutrition. We describe this novel approach to enhancing food environments using as a model the N3F, which provides financial and technical support to SMEs to increase the availability and affordability of more nutritious foods in domestic food environments. We consider both the opportunities and challenges of this approach.

Food insecurity has many causes, including insufficient incomes, competing expenditure needs, and inadequate facilities to store and prepare food. The characteristics that contribute to food insecurity may also contribute to other co-occurring hardships. This article examines people's experiences of food insecurity, poor financial wellbeing, poor physical health and long-term disability, low social support, inadequate economic resources, and housing stress, using 2020 data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. It finds that food insecurity typically co-occurs with other hardships. Nearly two-thirds of food-insecure Australians experience another hardship, and just under one-third experience multiple other hardships.

We examine the association between woman farmers and community well-being using U.S. county-level data. We address modeling uncertainty around three measures of community well-being by using a spatial Bayesian model averaging approach and find that a higher share of farms operated or owned by women in a county is associated with higher rates of new business formation, longer life expectancies, and lower poverty rates. The results are consistent with a growing literature that finds women business owners approach their businesses more holistically, with positive community spillovers.

Current and proposed policies aim to leverage the Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) to promote conservation practices. This study uses corn farm-level survey data to inform the effectiveness of targeting FCIP participants. We implement an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to assess what conservation practices are most common among participants. We find that farms that use crop insurance have higher adoption rates for practices that are generally profit-maximizing. We also calculate nitrogen balance, a yield-scaled measure of nitrogen fertilizer's potential environmental impact. We find a positive relationship between crop insurance and nitrogen balance closer to the optimum.