APPLIED ECONOMICS AND POLICY


What is free food worth? A nonmarket valuation approach to estimating the welfare effects


DAVID JUST


SUSAN ECKERT LYNCH PROFESSOR IN SCIENCE AND BUSINESS


Charles H. Dyson School


of Applied Economics and Management Cornell SC Johnson College of Business Cornell University


of food pantry services American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 105, 4, August 2023 LINK TO PAPER


Author • David Just


Susan Eckert Lynch Professor in Science and Business, Charles H.


Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University


• Anne Byrne, United States Department of Agriculture Summary


Food pantries provide groceries to millions of households in the United States every year. Although there is research and information on many other aspects of food pantries, including financial information such as tax valuations for donated food, there is not a literature establishing the economic value of food pantry access for clients and potential clients.


Just and Byrne use a valuation approach from environmental economics, re- vealed preference travel cost modeling, in a novel application to estimate food pantry value. Tey use a rich administrative dataset from a food bank system in Colorado and estimate demand for pantry visits, exploiting the move of a local pantry to correct for endogeneity bias. Tey find that the annual value of pantry access to pantry client households is between $600 and $1000, and the value per pantry visit is between $40 and $60. Assuming these values hold nationally, their localized results imply that the collective value of food pantry access among pantry client households may be between $19 billion and $28 billion dollars annually.


TO IMPACT CONTENTS


RESEARCH WITH IMPACT: CORNELL SC JOHNSON COLLEGE OF BUSINESS • 2023 EDITION


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