Metin Cakir

On the Measurement of Food Waste

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, one-quarter to one-third of all the food produced worldwide is wasted. We develop a simple framework to systematically think about food waste based on the life cycle of a typical food item. Based on our framework, we identify problems with extant measures of food waste and propose a more consistent and practical approach. In so doing, we first show that the widely cited, extant measures of the quantity and value of food waste are inconsistent with one another and overstate the problem of food waste. By misdirecting and misallocating some of the resources that are currently put into food waste reduction efforts, this overstatement of the problem could have severe consequences for public policy. Our framework then allows documenting the points of intervention for policies aimed at reducing the extent of food waste in the life cycle of food and the identification of interdependencies between potential policy levers.

The Economic Impacts of 2015 Avian Influenza Outbreak on the U.S. Turkey Industry and the Loss Mitigating Role of Free Trade Agreements

We investigate the economic impacts of the 2015 HPAI outbreak on turkey producers in Minnesota and the United States. Using a partial equilibrium model of the meat and poultry industry we find that the cost of the outbreak to U.S turkey producers was

Spatial and Temporal Variation in the Value of the Women, Infants, and Children Program’s Fruit and Vegetable Voucher

225 million;

Consumer Response to Package Downsizing: Evidence from the Chicago Ice Cream Market

207 million of which were due to the loss in exports. However, it could have been worse if not for implementation of regional bans by trading partners who have negotiated free trade agreements with the United States. Our results show that for every percentage point of additional exports, U.S. turkey producers avoided a loss of about

Revisiting Concentration in Food and Agricultural Supply Chains: The Welfare Implications of Market Power in a Complementary Input Sector

6 million.

Vice or virtue: How shopping frequency affects healthfulness of food choices

&NA; Increasing the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables among children and low‐income households is a public health policy priority in the United States. We investigate temporal and spatial price patterns for fresh fruits and vegetables to evaluate the extent to which the value of the fruit and vegetable Cash‐Value‐Voucher (CVV) of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) may be affected by unequal price levels and changes in price levels across the United States. Our findings show that price differences over space and time have real and consequential impacts on the purchasing power of the CVV. A WIC Program participant in the highest‐cost Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) can buy significantly fewer fruits and vegetables than a participant who receives the same benefit in the lowest‐cost MSA. Further, we find that the value of the CVV has substantially declined across all MSAs since 2009. We discuss the nutritional implications of the variation in the value of the CVV and evaluate potential mechanisms that could be implemented to maintain equal CVV benefits across time and space.