Osei Yeboah

Demand for Fresh Vegetables in the United States: 1970–2010

This paper analyzes a demand system for eight major fresh vegetables in the USA using the most recently available dataset (1970–2010). A first-differenced Linear Approximate Almost Ideal Demand System (LA-AIDS) is applied to estimate price and expenditure elasticity of demand, imposing homogeneity and symmetry restrictions. We find that not only are consumers responsive to changes in own-prices but they also respond significantly to changes in prices of other fresh vegetables that are consumed together. Conditional budget share allocation to lettuce, cabbage, and celery has declined, while the share of the consumer dollar going to tomatoes, peppers, and onions has increased over the period. Except for cabbage, all own-price elasticity estimates are negative, less than unity in absolute value, and statistically significant. About half of the 56 cross-price elasticities are negative and significant, indicating high, albeit asymmetric, complementarities among these fresh vegetables. Expenditure elasticities are positive and significant for all but one of these eight vegetables. Over the period under consideration, demand and expenditure elasticities remained fairly stable.

Pollution, Environmental Justice, and the North Carolina Pork Industry

North Carolina ranks as the 2nd largest hog producer in the United States. Currently, the state houses over 10 million hogs. It is estimated that about 19 million tons of hog waste was produced in 2004 by the 10 million hogs in the state (scorecard.com). Despite the increase in waste output due to increased production, concerns are that majority of these producers have not improved their waste management practices. Most importantly, all the big factories are located in counties in the Black Belt region of the state. These are counties where the percent Black population is greater than the state and national averages of 25.4% and 12% respectively. The existence of pollution, poverty, and minority populations in a given area, more often than not, raise questions about environmental justice. Statistical and geographical information systems (GIS) analyses are performed at the zip code level to whether relatively poor, nonwhite populations are disproportionately exposed to hog waste directly or indirectly. The results indicate that these populations are not directly targeted but their association with poverty and also being rural dwellers help explain their disproportionate exposure.