Food purchases differ substantially across countries. We use detailed household level data from the US, France and the UK to (i) document these differences; (ii) estimate a demand system for food and nutrients, and (iii) simulate counterfactual choices if households faced prices and nutritional...

This paper provides an analysis of the role of prices in determining food purchases and nutrition using very detailed transaction-level observations for a large, nationally-representative sample of US consumers over the period 2002-2007. Using product- specific nutritional information, we...

We examine the effect of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on the quality of household food purchases using the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) and propensity score matching. A healthy purchasing index (HPI) is...

Models of consumer behavior play a key role in modern empirical Industrial Organization. In this paper, I survey some of the models used in this literature. In particular, I discuss two commonly used demand systems: multi-stage budgeting approaches and discrete choice models. I motivate their...

Previous research has used survey and diary data to carefully document that Food Stamp recipients decrease their expenditures and consumption of food throughout the benefit month, the beginning of which is defined by the date on which benefits are distributed. The reliance on survey and diary...

We show that personal experiences of economic shocks can “scar'” consumer behavior in the long run. We first illustrate the effects of experience-based learning in a simple stochastic life-cycle consumption model with time-varying financial constraints. We then use data from the Panel Study...

We study the effect on nutrition of an exogenous increase in food grain subsidy in rural India resulting from a program targeting the poor. Our analysis suggests that increase in income resulting from the food price subsidy changed consumption patterns in favor of the subsidized grains and...

This paper uses a detailed panel of individual spending, income, account balances, and credit limits from a personal finance management software provider to investigate how expenditures, liquid savings, and consumer debt change around retirement. The longitudinal nature of our data allows us to...

We report the results of a field experiment where we exogenously vary the use of social comparisons "nudges" and subsidies for participation in an in-home energy audit program, and follow subjects through to the subsequent purchase of durable goods. We therefore can compare the causal effect of...

In this paper we study consumption network effects. Does the consumption of our peers affect our own consumption? How large is such effect? What are the economic mechanisms behind it? We use long panel data on the entire Danish population to construct a measure of consumption based on...