RESEARCH
Works in Progress
The Social Value of Animal Welfare: A Revealed Policy Preference Approach
[Job Market Paper]
+/- Abstract
Public policies often aim to provide goods that are not directly priced in markets.One such category of non-market good is the notoriously evasive “non-use value”, which is impossible to pin down using revealed market data alone. To overcome this, economists have designed intricate stated-preference strategies. This paper introduces a revealed-preference framework to estimate voter willingness to pay (WTP) for policies that generate non-use value by merging regional referendum results of a real policy with local market data. I focus on California’s Proposition 12 (2018), which banned the in-state sale of eggs from caged hens by 2024. The policy passed by a wide margin despite increasing egg prices for a large majority of voters. Using rich administrative and scanner data, I find that precinct-level approval of Prop 12 was sensitive to regional variation in cage-free prices after controlling for a variety of other predictors. To recover the distribution of total WTP for Prop 12 across the California electorate, I develop a structural model in which heterogeneous voters trade off expected price increases against their WTP for the policy. I then separately identify private (use) WTP using a discrete choice demand model estimated on retail scanner data, and compute non-use WTP as a residual. I find that a substantial portion of voter support for Prop 12 reflects consumer-voters’ non-use value–willingness to pay for animal welfare improvements independent of personal consumption–suggesting that animal welfare may be a public good. Ultimately, my results provide the first estimates of non-use WTP for farm animal welfare outside of a lab setting and offer a general framework for measuring demand for quasi-public goods using public referenda.
(with Zach Freitas-Groff and Carl Meyer)
[Revision Requested: European Economic Review]
+/- Abstract
The past decades have seen a number of new policies and food technology businesses concerned with alleviating animal welfare or environmental impacts of animal agriculture. We study whether there is evidence that consumer behavior is changing in parallel by examining real grocery purchases matched with machine-scanned label data. We find that meat consumption has been at its highest in recent years, consistent with prior observations, but we offer the first observational evidence that a growing share of the population is purchasing less or no meat and other animal products. While some of this trend can be explained by changes in the volume of grocery purchases, we suggest that media and generational turnover are further driving this trend. We finally discuss the plausible effects of meat alternatives, finding that while they affect meat consumption at a low volume now, they could play a major role in the future.
Media coverage: Vox
A Scoping Review of (Dis-)Incentives for Welfare-improving Farming Practices
(with Sharon Pailler, Jon McFadden, Sharon Raszap, Zach Raff, Kevin Kuruc)
[Revision Requested: Food Policy]
+/- Abstract
Public interest in improving farm animal welfare has increased in recent years, but research on implementation lags behind. This review examines the incentives and barriers to adoption from the perspective of key stakeholders: farmers and other animal product producers. We perform a machine-learning aided scoping review of the academic literature studying how different rearing practices influence outcomes for producers, providing direct evidence on the (dis-)incentives of adopting the practices studied. This allows us to (1) identify existing consensus and (2) highlight research gaps on this question. Operating costs emerge as a near-universal disincentive for welfare-improving practices. Conversely, improved indoor environment shows potential benefits for animal health and productivity, suggesting the possibility of interventions that have only negligible impacts on overall profits. These takeaways are drawn from a relatively sparse literature, underscoring important research gaps. Addressing these gaps can inform evidence-based policies that align practice with public expectations for farm animal welfare while being cognizant of producer constraints and incentives.
Wildfire Zoning and Heterogeneous Responses to Wildfire Events: Evidence from the California Housing Market
(with Matthew Wibbenmeyer)
+/- Abstract
Do wildfires alter local demographics? Employing event study and difference-in-differences strategies, we study the effect of 192 large wildfire events (2016-2018) on nearby house transaction prices and quantities to identify heterogeneity in real estate market responses across Fire Hazard Severity Zones (FHSZ) mapped by the state in 2011. We find that post-wildfire sellers in "very high" FHSZ have significantly lower incomes than before, whereas post-wildfire sellers outside of any FHSZ (non-FHSZ) have the same income levels as before. Meanwhile, post-wildfire buyers have lower incomes than before regardless of zone. Controlling for house characteristics, home prices in "very high" FHSZ are unaffected by a nearby fire, however the types of homes sold in these areas after a fire are of a significantly lower quality relative to before. In contrast, home prices in non-FHSZ areas decrease after a nearby fire by more than 14 percent and remain low for at least a year, but the quality of homes sold in these areas remains the same as before. We rationalize these findings by calibrating a model of seller/buyer behavior that incorporates decreasing relative risk aversion and treats wildfires as information shocks.
No Ethical Consumption Under General Equilibrium? Evidence from the US Meat Market
(with Christoph Semken)
+/- Abstract
Many consumers engage in ethical consumption, altering their consumption choices so as to mitigate their personal contributions to negative externalities such as climate change, animal welfare, or pollution. But do individual consumption choice have any impact on overall externalities in a competitive market? In this paper, we estimate the effect of consumption changes on externalities in general equilibrium for the U.S. meat market. We derive sufficient statistics based on the demand and supply cross-price elasticities of all goods with externalities. We estimate the cross-price elasticities using home scanner data and farmer surveys, respectively, and derive the effect of ethical meat consumption on animal welfare. We further show that the effect on other externalities can be estimated using bounding assumptions on substitution patterns. Using such assumptions, we additionally estimate the effect of ethical meat consumption on overall greenhouse gas emissions
Published Work
(with Alex Hoagland)
Contemporary Economic Policy, 2018
Other Work
(with Ethan Ligon)
GiveWell "Change Our Mind Contest" Honorable Mention, 2022
