Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

This dissertation examines how public policies and food-market environments shape participation, purchasing behavior, and the transmission of policy interventions. Although food-related policies are often evaluated in terms of formal eligibility rules, statutory tax rates, or intended target populations, their realized effects depend on the behavioral and institutional mechanisms through which households access benefits, encounter marketing, and face retail prices. The three essays study these mechanisms across the U.S. food assistance and beverage markets.

The first chapter investigates whether expanding the channels through which public benefits can be redeemed affects participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Exploiting the staggered implementation of the SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot across states, the analysis shows that online benefit redemption increases program participation, while the magnitude of the response depends on digital infrastructure, transportation access, and demographic composition.

The second chapter studies whether youth-relevant television advertising affects household regular soda purchases. By linking household purchase records with local advertising exposure and using a shift-share instrumental-variable strategy, the analysis finds that advertising aired during child-viewership hours increases soda purchases. The effects are particularly pronounced among households with children, especially households with teenagers and low-income households with multiple children.

The third essay examines how retailers transmit local sugar-sweetened beverage taxes to consumers. Using store-level scanner data and staggered policy adoption, it documents substantial but incomplete average tax pass-through, heterogeneous pricing responses across retail channels, reductions in purchase intensity, and adjustments in promotional activity.

Collectively, the essays demonstrate that the effects of food policies cannot be inferred solely from their statutory or administrative design. Policy outcomes are mediated by access costs, consumer attention and persuasion, retailer conduct, and preexisting infrastructure. The findings contribute to the economics of social programs, advertising, public health taxation, and food retailing by identifying behavioral and market mechanisms that determine who responds to policy, through which margins, and under what conditions. More broadly, the dissertation highlights the importance of evaluating food policy as part of an interconnected system in which households, firms, and public institutions jointly shape observed outcomes.

Date

7-17-2026

Committee Chair

Li Qingxiao

LSU Acknowledgement

1

LSU Accessibility Acknowledgment

1

Download

Available for download on Friday, July 15, 2033

Share

COinS