Alessandro Bonanno, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at Colorado State University, will present the EEEP Seminar Series, “What if It Never Happened? Counterfactual Food Expenditures During the COVID-19 Pandemic” on April 19, 2023.
Abstract: Throughout the different stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic, U.S. households adapted their food spending in response to social distancing / lockdown measures, case surges, and the roll-out of vaccines. We contribute to the emerging literature studying changes in food purchasing patterns during the pandemic by estimating U.S. households Food-At-Home (FAH) and Food-Away-From-Home (FAFH) counterfactual expenditures from March 2020 to December 2021, under a scenario where no COVID-19 (or other) shocks had occurred. Counterfactual expenditures are obtained applying standard predictive econometric models to monthly food expenditures data for seven FAH and four FAFH channels, combining USDA-ERS Food Expenditure Series and U.S. Bureau of Census data. The gap between observed and counterfactual expenditures is decomposed into a component capturing changes in purchasing behavior, and another measuring the differences between observed and counterfactuals price levels. Results show that: 1) some of the FAH channels saw food expenditures lower than the counterfactuals, while Grocery stores and online / mail orders benefitted from lockdown policies; 2) in the early COVID months FAFH expenditures were about one fifth lower than the counterfactuals; limited- and full-service restaurants saw the largest gaps in early months in later months expenditure levels for FAFH exceed the counterfactuals; 3) FAH price levels spiked during the lockdowns and remained at higher levels than the counterfactuals – and FAFH’s – throughout the period analyzed; and 4) in the early pandemic months differences between counterfactual and observed expenditures were largely driven by changes in purchasing behavior, while differences in observed and counterfactual price levels account for up to 50% of the food expenditure gaps in later months.
Speaker Bio: Alessandro Bonanno is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Colorado State University. Before joining CSU he served on the faculty at Penn State University and at Wageningen University and Research Center. He obtained his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics, from the University of Connecticut, where he developed an interest for the economics of food retailing. His current research interests span across applied industrial organization, food labeling, food and nutrition security, and food systems economics. He is one of the co-editors of Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, and the chair of the Food Safety and Nutrition section of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.