Timothy Beatty

The potential impact of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) restrictions on expenditures: a systematic review

OBJECTIVE To systematically review the potential impact of reducing the set of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)-eligible foods (e.g. not allowing purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages with SNAP benefits) on expenditures for restricted foods. DESIGN The impact on food expenditures of a

American Journal of Agricultural Economics Volume 100: A Century of Publishing the Frontiers of the Profession

US 1 reduction in available SNAP benefits can be used to estimate the impact of restrictions on SNAP-eligible foods. An electronic search of EconPapers, AgEcon Search, EconLit, WorldCat, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, PubMed and NALDC, and a snowball search were conducted to obtain a sample of studies up to March 2015 that estimate the impacts of SNAP and other income on household food expenditures. The studies were classified according to study population, study design and whether they attempted to correct for major study design biases. SETTING Estimates were extracted from fifty-nine published and unpublished studies. SUBJECTS US households. RESULTS Fifty-nine studies were found, yielding 123 estimates of the impact of SNAP benefits on food expenditures and 117 estimates of the difference in impacts between SNAP benefits and other income. Studies correcting for or mitigating study design biases had less estimate variation. Estimates indicate that expenditures on the restricted item would decrease by

Do environmental factors drive obesity? Evidence from international graduate students

US 1·6 to

Cash by Any Other Name? Evidence on Labelling from the UK Winter Fuel Payment

US 4·8 if

Effects of Subsidies and Prohibitions on Nutrition in a Food Benefit Program: A Randomized Clinical Trial

US 10 of SNAP benefits would have otherwise been spent, with a median overall impact of

A bounds analysis of world food futures: global agriculture through to 2050.

US 3. CONCLUSIONS The present literature suggests that restrictions on SNAP-eligible items may result in a small but potentially meaningful decrease in SNAP expenditures for restricted items. Further research is needed to evaluate whether this would translate into improvements in diet quality.

Who Responds to Air Quality Alerts

&NA; The American Journal of Agricultural Economics reached its 100th volume this year. We take this landmark volume as an opportunity to reflect on the evolution of this leading field journal—and one of the original research journals in economics. We document changes in the editorial structure of the journal—from a sole editor‐in‐chief to the present system of four rotating co‐editors—and in the management of the publication process overseen by these editors. Using bibliometric analysis, we then track various trends in the journal over the past century. We assess changes in the structure of articles, including increased article length, reliance on mathematical modeling and empirical analysis, and the dramatic rise in collaborative publication in the form of expanding co‐author teams. We also explore changes in the degree of topical specialization and the geographic coverage of research published in AJAE. We use co‐authoring relationships to construct collaboration networks specific to the journal and document the striking increase in the density of these networks. We conclude with some perspectives on the implications of this century‐long evolution of the journal for the coming decades of pushing and publishing the frontiers of the profession.

Heat or Eat?: An empirical analysis of U.K. cold weather income support

International students offer a unique window into the role environmental factors play in driving obesity. Naïve estimates of the relationship between environmental factors and obesity are often plagued by reverse causation, sample selection, and omitted variable bias. In this study, we survey international students at 40 public universities across the United States. We use this unique data to link the weight gain of international students to the prevalence of obesity where they live. We argue that our estimates are less likely to be biased as international students have limited control over the environment to which they are exposed upon arrival in the United States. We find that students living in areas with a higher prevalence of obesity show a biologically important and statistically significantly greater increase in weight as compared to those living in areas with a lower prevalence of obesity. Results provide cautious evidence that environmental characteristics of a region can affect the weight gain of individuals.