The number of US school food authority's (SFA) implementing Farm to School Programming (FTSP) is growing. Little is known about potential spillover effects of school children's exposure to FTSP on household food purchases. We measure the relationship between school age children's exposure to FTSP and household-level Food-At-Home fruits and vegetables (FV) expenditures and expenditure shares. Combining Farm to School Census data on SFAs' FTSP participation with household-level scanner data, we estimate positive relationships between FV expenditures and different measures of children's exposure to FTSPs, especially for metro households. However, the magnitude of these relationships is likely too small to be meaningful.
The relationship between employment and women's weight outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is less studied. In this study, we use nearest-neighbor matching to analyze the association between off-farm employment and women's body mass index (BMI), using data from 364,426 adult women from 36 SSA countries. We find that employment off-farm is associated with improvement in women's weight status. Off-farm employment is associated with higher BMI in women (by 1.6%), and lower BMI among obese and overweight women (by 28% and 16%, respectively). These findings provide information that could guide policymakers working at the intersection of women's health and employment.
This study develops a novel framework of heterogeneous consumers and producers to analyze the market and welfare impacts of the “Buy Local” trend. Analytical results show that the trend's impacts depend on the size and type of the locality; that is, whether the locality is an exporter or an importer of the relevant products. For instance, while the trend benefits both consumers and producers of large localities, it leaves producers of small exporting localities unaffected. The presence of the trend in large localities affects also outside consumers and producers with the welfare impact depending on the type of locality.
We examine the effects of own order history, peer order history, and MyPlate nudges received by middle-school National School Lunch Program (NSLP) participants while preordering on the selection of fruits and vegetables. Students receiving own order history nudges were significantly less likely to select a vegetable during the postintervention phase. Students who received peer order history nudges were significantly less likely to select a vegetable during the nudging and postintervention phases, suggesting that receiving information on peer selection negatively impacted the selection of vegetables. The MyPlate recommendations nudge may mitigate the negative effects of receiving peer selection information.
We examine the causal effects of supply and demand shocks on the relative prices of beef cuts in the United States using a Structural Vector Autoregression model to disentangle the shocks. Supply and demand shocks have distinct, dynamic effects on relative prices, of roughly equal magnitude. Responses to supply shocks are less flat than implied by biological constraints, implying market constraints are binding. Responses to demand shocks are more stable, but interestingly “invert” about 9 months after the shock. Our findings are consistent with heterogeneous demand functions and fixed proportions of supply across cuts, as well as lifecycle constraints on livestock production.
We examined the effects of the trade war on US wooden furniture imports by product category (kitchen, bedroom, other) and exporting source (e.g., China, European Union, Vietnam) using a two-stage demand procedure and general nested demand framework. There were significant competitive relationships across exporting countries. However, when both trade creation and diversion were considered, competitive relationships either diminished or became complementary. Consequently, elimination of the trade-war tariffs would increase imports from China but would also benefit countries like Vietnam. However, results indicate that imports from China would still be significantly less than pretrade war levels if the tariffs are eliminated.
Long-term agricultural baseline projections are revised annually to incorporate new information. We evaluate the effectiveness of the US Department of Agriculture and Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute crops and farm income baseline revisions to inform policymakers. The revisions are effective in improving the baseline projections in comparison to the initial projections, but they do not outperform the naïve projections. Upward revisions are found to be more effective than downward revisions. We find evidence of predictability and therefore a violation of weak efficiency for the revisions, which results from information rigidity for the crop variables and from information rigidity and strategic smoothing for the farm income variables.
Until recently, lack of customer transaction data at farmers markets prevented strategic vendor decision making to increase customer purchases. We collect point-of-sale data on over 26,000 transactions in 2021 from 10 livestock farms at 22 farmers markets in New York State. We find noncash payment types, earlier sale hours, product differentiation, and lower customer densities are associated with higher customer transaction size, as is the number of product groups (species) and item variety offered by vendors. Marginal expenditure effects on over 30 meat product categories across seven livestock species provide valuable information on alternative product offerings and pricing.
Using a repository of historical student responses to an actual course-assigned essay prompt and a series of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated responses to the same prompt, we conduct a single-blind, randomized experiment to evaluate the performance of AI in agricultural and applied economics education. Further, we assess instructors' ability to detect the use of AI. We find that AI-generated responses to the essay received statistically significantly higher scores than those of the average student. Instructors who had previous exposure to dialog-based AI were 13 times more likely to accurately detect AI-generated essays than instructors without previous exposure to the technology.

