Major changes in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food packages that were implemented in 2009 included reductions in the amount of milk and 100% juices, as well as the removal of whole milk from food packages. In analyzing the effect of these changes on the beverage consumption of Texas WIC children ages two to four, we found a significant decrease in the amount of whole milk consumed, and this decrease was partially offset by the increase in the amount of lower-fat milks consumed. Intakes of both desirable and undesirable nutrients from milk were decreased.

With decades of behavioral economic research now achieving prominence, the last decade has seen the advent of behavioral policymaking. These efforts have been widely seen as successful in that they achieve policy goals without inducing backlash on the part of policy targets. Behavioral policies create a unique challenge to welfare analysis that has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The existence of behavioral effects creates a paradox, at once justifying the use of paternalistic policies and undermining the empirical foundations of welfare analysis. In this paper I explore the behavioral welfare paradox and its implications for economic policy prescription.

Four key policy challenges, framed here as dichotomies, are commonly associated with attempts to improve the use of natural resources in the socioecological commons. These dichotomies present tradeoffs when addressing market failures and in general seem to suggest the need to settle for second-best outcomes rather than first-best outcomes identified in stylized models. Citing examples, we argue that these models, while illustrating these dichotomies, also suggest means for circumventing them, and perhaps provide a degree of optimism about prospective outcomes in socioecological systems.

Policymakers and value chain members often use a one-size-fits-all strategy to increase local food consumption. Our results indicate this approach may not be effective; local food buyers and nonbuyers have differing barriers to purchasing more or accessing local food. We examine the effect of demographics, health indicators, shopping location, and zip code on those barriers. Prices and availability are barriers for both buyers and nonbuyers. Consumers with higher healthy diet scores are more likely to think about local food availability. Providing specific products is a more viable strategy than creating additional purchasing venues. These results are important, as governments seek to increase local food purchases and enhance local agriculture.

We illustrate how natural resource dependent and isolated communities manage their forest stock. Our model is based on field observations of the Eaglewood trade in Papua New Guinea. Using a dynamic model of household utility maximization and simulations, we analyze the impact of variations in the (monopsonistic) resource price on the households’ consumption choices and their allocation of effort across depletive and nondepletive activities. The stock of forest is embedded directly in the households’ utility function (existence value) and in their (nonseparable) production and consumption functions. We show that poverty (in production assets) does not inevitably lead to stock depletion.

Using patent statistics related to solar power on a panel of eleven countries from 1990 to 2008, we build a reduced-form model to analyze the role that public policies play in fostering innovation. We conclude that public expenditure on R&D and feed-in tariffs have a significant effect on the development of solar energy. We also find a significant effect of electricity price, attributable to rising energy prices. Using patent citations, we estimate the knowledge flows available to inventors in each country over time and we find that the marginal productivity of R&D has a positive and significant effect on innovation.

Christmas tree sales are considerable throughout the United States. Understanding the drivers of purchase for Christmas trees is critical for producers and stakeholders within states with tree production. Using data from a choice experiment in combination with latent class modeling, we find that tree height is important, but tree species is less important. Further, we show that local labeling does not influence all consumers. With respect to retail location, we show that nursery/greenhouse and choose-and-cut retail outlets are preferred by a majority of consumers but not by all consumers. Recommendations for the varying retail outlets are provided.

Marine spatial planning (MSP) offers an operational framework to address sustainable and well-planned use of ocean space. Spatial allocation has traditionally been single-sector, which fails to account for multiple pressures on the marine environment and user conflicts. There is a need for integrated assessments of ocean space to advance quantitative tools and decision-making. Using the example of offshore wind energy, this article offers thoughts about how MSP has evolved in the United States and how the varying scales of MSP achieve different outcomes. Finally, a review of quantitative and qualitative studies that are needed to support MSP are presented.

After a strong expansion across the United States, farmers markets’ (FMs) growth rate has declined in spite of policymakers’ interest in promoting them. In this study we model farmers’ participation in FMs and investigate what market factors affect FMs’ location using zip-code-level data for the New England states. Our results suggest that market size, education, presence of children in the household and SNAP participation lend to the establishment of FMs, more than income per se. Farming activities has a positive association with the likelihood of FMs, while proxies for establishment costs and the presence of traditional distribution channels may play a limiting role in their formation.

This study uses an experiment where ferry passengers are sold hotel room “views” to evaluate the impact of wind turbines views on tourists’ vacation experience. Participants purchase a chance for a weekend hotel stay. Information about the hotel rooms was limited to the quality of the hotel and its distance from a large wind turbine, as well as whether or not a particular room would have a view of the turbine. While there was generally a negative effect of turbine views, this did not hold across all participants, and did not seem to be effected by distance or hotel quality.

The U.S. brewing industry was at a low point in the 1980s. Since that time, more than 4,000 new breweries of varying scales and scopes have entered the market. Given the rapid expansion in this industry, which involves large capital costs, it is useful to consider the competitive nature of individual firms. Using a sample of New England breweries, this study identifies several firm and geographic attributes that are linked to firms’ product offerings. We find that the breadth of product lines and nature of competition varies by brewery type and by the economic environment of the market.

We determine the production risk effects and welfare implications of single-trait Bt corn adoption in the Philippines. We use a stochastic production function estimation approach that allows for examining the skewness effects of Bt within a damage abatement specification. Our results indicate that Bt corn has a statistically significant yield increasing, risk-increasing (i.e., variance-increasing) and downside risk-reducing (i.e., skewness-increasing) effects. Based on risk premium, certainty equivalent, and loss probability welfare measures, Bt corn farmers in the Philippines are better-off (in absolute terms) relative to non-Bt farmers given Bt corn's dominant yield increasing effect and downside risk-reducing effect.

Converting coastal waters to farmed production of seafood may generate conflicts with other resource users. This study explores the impact of marine aquaculture development on coastal homeowners. Using single-family home sales from 2012–2014 and spatial data on coastal aquaculture activity, we employ hedonics to assess the impacts of mariculture development in three study areas of Maine, USA. Our results suggest modest impacts on residential property values with significant spatial variation across study areas. This spatial variation represents a challenge for managers and highlights the potential benefits from coordinating the development of aquaculture to balance resource users' objectives with industry growth.

A difference-in-differences approach is used to measure the impact of new inner-city grocery store developments on residential housing values in Worcester, Massachusetts. Using geocoded housing sales from 1988–2011, we develop a hedonic model, exploiting temporal and spatial discontinuities, to identify the effect of 12 new grocery stores on neighborhood housing prices. Results suggest these new stores were associated with an increase in sale prices of nearby homes, and these results could help inform current policies related to urban food deserts, in that new grocery stores have the potential to improve neighborhood wealth as well as health.

We find distiller's dried grains with solubles (DDGS) prices to be positively correlated with both corn and soybean meal prices in the long run. However, neither corn nor soybean meal prices respond to deviations from this long-run relationship. We also identify strong time-varying dynamic conditional correlations between the markets, with the correlation between DDGS and corn strengthened after the expansion of ethanol production. There also appear to exist significant volatility spillovers from both the corn and soybean meal markets to the DDGS market, with the impact from corn shocks much larger compared to soybean meal shocks.

We investigate allocation of funds by citizens across management options addressing impairments to coastal water quality. We study systematic variation in citizen allocation of funds to adaptive versus preventative strategies including the impact of referundum choices and test whether allocations will be impacted by cuing in the design of the referendum. Two key policy insights from our results: citizens who vote no on a water quality referendum have different preferences over allocating funds and providing cues to voters influenced allocation behavior. These results can assist decision makers in thinking about language used to communicate coastal water quality issues, particularly budget referenda.

As growers adopt and diffuse improved food crop cultivars, their investment decisions for producing new cultivars control product accessibility and directly affect the entire supply chain. In this study, we estimated growers’ willingness to invest (willingness to pay (WTP)) in cultivars with improved quality traits for five rosaceous fruit crops: apple, peach, strawberry, sweet cherry, and tart cherry. WTP values differed by crop, but fruit flavor was consistently rated one of the most important traits, with higher WTP. This information will help breeding programs focus resources to develop superior cultivars for long-term economic sustainability of the rosaceous fruit industry.

This study uses field experiments to investigate consumer preferences for oysters. In total, 486 adult participants completed a series of revealed-preference dichotomous-choice tasks and a demographic survey. Using a random effects logit model, we investigate factors that influence participants’ decisions to purchase oysters. As expected, price had a significant negative effect, while income had a positive effect. Older individuals and those who were relatively selective regarding shell color or smell are less likely to buy oysters, but consumers who valued size, oyster species, and harvest location were willing to pay more.

We empirically test separation of ownership and control (SOC) and the interaction of SOC with farmer effort on farm success using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Resource Management Survey. We use a two-stage least-squares approach with instrumental variables that proxy for participation constraints in binding incentive contracts. We find that the interaction has a significantly positive effect on success for grain farms and an insignificant effect for livestock farms. The results are consistent with hypotheses by Allen and Lueck (1998), but our model predicts that farms with SOC are likely to be more successful than farms without SOC despite exogenous uncertainty and agency costs.