Journal Publications
Dollar store expansion and independent grocery retailer contraction
This paper examines the effects of dollar store entry on independent grocery retailers in the United States between 2000 and 2019. We utilized an establishment-level dataset comprising all grocery retailers and dollar stores in the country. Our findings indicate that dollar store entry is associated with a 5.7% decrease in sales, a 3.7% reduction in employment, and a 2.3% rise in the likelihood of independent grocery retailers quitting the business. These adverse entry effects are three times larger in rural than urban areas. Event studies indicate that the negative impact on sales and employment disappears gradually in urban areas but persists in rural communities. We document differences in treatment effects of dollar store entry across regions, retail formats, and time.
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with Sandro Steinbach (North Dakota State University), Rigoberto Lopez (Univeristy of Connecticut)
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Published in American Economic Perspectives & Policy: Link
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Related publication: Dollar Store Entry Affects Rural Grocery Stores More Than Urban
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Citation: Lopez, R., K. Marchesi, and S. Steinbach. 2024. "Dollar store expansion and independent grocery retailer contraction". Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 46(2), 514-533.
The Impact of COVID-19 Vaccination on Food Spending Behavior in the United States
The US government’s efforts in response to the pandemic included the development, manufacturing, and distribution of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. By the end of 2020, the Food and Drug Administration issued Emergency Use Authorizations for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Following this authorization, on December 14, 2020, each State received allocations of vaccines and devised individual distribution plans. This study investigates the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on US food spending at home and away from home in 2021 employing fixed-effects regression analysis on quarterly State-level data. The results reveal that higher vaccination rates—measured by the share of the population that is fully vaccinated—are associated with a decrease in food-at-home sales and an increase in food-away-from-home sales. Further analysis reveals nuanced shifts between full-service and limited-service restaurants, indicating increased sales at full-service establishments and decreased sales at limited-service ones, suggesting a trade-off effect between the two restaurant types. The results of this study provide valuable insights for policymakers and industry stakeholders seeking to understand the heterogenous impacts of vaccinations on food spending.
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with Eliana Zeballos (USDA, ERS) and Wilson Sinclair (USDA, ERS)
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Published in Medical Research Archives: Link
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Citation: Zeballos, Eliana; Sinclair, Wilson; Marchesi, Keenan. The Impact of COVID-19 Vaccination on Food Spending Behavior in the United States. Medical Research Archives, [S.l.], v. 12, n. 2, feb. 2024. ISSN 2375-1924.
Conflict and Nutrition: Endogenous Dietary Responses in Nepal
We study the effect of conflict in Nepal on dietary diversity as proxied by food consumption scores (FCS). By comparing pre-violence and peak-violence data and using household fixed effects to address selection into violence, we find that a 100 percent increase in local intensity of violence decreases household FCS by 3 percent. Despite an increase in the diversity of household food production, this is more than offset by the decrease in the diversity of purchased food. These endogenous responses provide potential avenues for policy responses and may be the origins of the oft-reported health shortcoming of exposed populations, particularly children.
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Published in Food Security: Link
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Citation:
Marchesi, K., Rockmore, M. Conflict and nutrition: endogenous dietary responses in Nepal. Food Sec. 15, 281–296 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-022-01305-9
Works in progress
Investigating the Lasting Changes in Consumer Food Consumption and Acquisition Since the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
This paper examines the changes in food-at-home consumption and food-away-from-home consumption and acquisition in the United States from 2019—2024. Exploiting the variation in State-level policy actions and vaccine rollouts, this work provides a longer-term view of altered food consumption and acquisition behavior during and after the pandemic. The most recent period was positively associated with food-at-home consumption and negatively associated with total food-away-from-home consumption, relative to pre-pandemic, driven by changes in acquisition method. Additionally, results show heterogeneity in food-at-home consumption and food-away-from-home acquisition across different groups. This work provides insights on the sustained changes in food consumption since the pandemic.
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With Chandler Zachary
Status: Under Review
Retail Concentration and Wages
Antitrust policy in the U.S. now explicitly includes labor-market outcomes as measures of interest when considering the potential anticompetitive effects of mergers or acquisitions. Concentration in the food retailing industry is of particular concern due to several recent high-profile mergers, and a troubling increase in concentration at the national and local levels. We study this problem using both causal reduced-form models and a structural model of search, match, and bargaining. Our reduced-form models show no relationship between concentration and wages, but our structural model finds that concentration is associated with substantial wage suppression.
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With Timothy J. Richards (ASU) and Ujjwol Paudel (ASU)
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Currently available via SSRN: Link
A Beershed Analysis of New England:
The Supply and Demand of Craft Breweries
As Berning and McCullough (2016) document, in 2014 there were more craft breweries in the U.S. since the 1870’s (about 3,000) and another 1,000 opened the following year. Indeed, during the 30-year time period from 1981 to 2011 there was a 3,500% increase in the number of breweries in the United States (McLaughlin, Reid, and Moore 2014). This astounding growth has inspired research questions in a variety of academic fields, including sociology and cultural geography concerning the emerging importance of place to craft beer consumers (e.g. Schnell and Reese, 2003; 2014; Debies-Carl, 2019), craft brewery tourism (Dunn and Wickham 2016), and neighborhood revitalization (Reid 2018). In this paper, we utilize a spatially explicit framework in order to examine the factors that affect the location decisions of craft breweries throughout the six New England states. Specifically, using the 2011 5-year American Community Survey data alongside a unique database of breweries throughout the region, we examine the factors that influence the likelihood of there being a brewery, and the number of breweries, in a given block group. We find that as the number of breweries in surrounding block groups increases, the likelihood of there being a brewery and additional breweries, increases. In addition, we find that access to major roadways, higher economic activity (as measured by night light activity), and close proximity to a college or university, are also strong influences on whether or not a block group has a brewery and the number of breweries that the block groups have.
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With Jacqueline Geoghegan (Clark University)
County Characteristics Associated With Receipt of Food Boxes Through the Farmers to Families Food Box Program
The CThe economic recession induced by the onset of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in March 2020 contributed to an increase in food hardship for millions of people. To help alleviate this hardship, USDA created the temporary Farmers to Families Food Box Program. Through this program, USDA contracted with producers, processors, and distributors to package agricultural commodities produced in the United States into boxes (hereafter “food boxes”) for delivery to nonprofit organizations (e.g., food banks and pantries) for distribution to people in need. However, evidence about whether and to what extent the program was able to reduce food hardship is limited. This report used administrative and survey data to examine whether counties characterized by greater levels of need (based on measures of their food environment, food access, rates of food hardship, economic conditions, demographic composition, and urbanicity) were more likely to receive food boxes. The program delivered 177.6 million food boxes from May 2020 through May 2021. Counties with larger populations and higher unemployment rates were more likely to receive food boxes throughout the program’s operation, as were more metropolitan counties and those with higher poverty rates and shares of non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic populations in round 5.
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Published by the Economic Research Service: Link
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Citation:
K. Marchesi, Toossi, S., & Georg, K. (2025). County characteristics associated with receipt of food boxes through the farmers to families food box program (Report No. ERR-346). U.S. lmao Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
Food Spending Shifted in Response to Pandemic; Changes for Food Away From Home Continued Through 2022
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic widely disrupted daily life, including which foods people bought and where they bought them. Following the pandemic declaration in March 2020, States and local governments across the country implemented public safety measures that limited access to in-person activities, closed or restricted businesses such as restaurants, and often invoked stay-at-home orders. At the same time, the United States experienced an economic downturn marked by an increase in unemployment rates. Supply-chain issues affected transportation of food from producers, consumers found it more difficult to safely access adequate food, and State and Federal Governments implemented multifaceted changes in food assistance. All these consequences of the pandemic meant unprecedented changes to spending on and acquisition of food at home (FAH) and food away from home (FAFH). USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) researchers used several proprietary datasets to document the shifts in food spending and acquisition behavior throughout the pandemic. They tracked changes in FAH and FAFH expenditures by comparing year-over-year percent changes in the inflation-adjusted dollars spent at food retailers such as grocery stores with year-over-year percent changes in FAFH transactions at restaurants on a weekly basis. While total annual food spending levels had recovered from pandemic-related shocks as of 2021, three ERS working papers documented that some pandemic-induced changes in what people were buying for food at home and where and how they were purchasing food away from home continued throughout 2022.
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Published by the Economic Research Service: Link
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Citation:
Keenan Marchesi, Patrick W. McLaughlin. January 2024. Food Spending Shifted in Response to Pandemic; Changes for Food Away From Home Continued Through 2022, Amber Waves: The Economics of Food, Farming, Natural Resources, and Rural America, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
COVID-19 Working Paper: Food-Away-From-Home Acquisition Trends Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing policy responses disrupted how consumers in the United States acquired food-away-from-home and little is known about how they adapted. This report summarizes national-level trends in dollars U.S. consumers spent from December 2019–February 2020 through April–June 2022 at quick- and full-service restaurants by service mode (on-premise, drive-thru, delivery, and carry-out) and acquisition and ordering method. Results shows that while on-premises (eating inside a restaurant) spending fell at quick- and full-service restaurants, spending at full-service restaurants remained much lower than pre-pandemic spending levels. Researchers found that consumers quickly adapted to other service modes, like delivery or drive-thru, and this offset many of the losses observed in spending at full-service restaurants. Consumers increased spending via cell phone apps for carry-out and delivery orders at both types of restaurants relative to pre-pandemic spending. In short, while consumers’ restaurant spending has largely returned to pre-pandemic levels, many of the ways that consumers interacted with both quick- and full-service restaurants immediately following the onset of the pandemic remained.
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Published by the Economic Research Service: Link
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Citation:
Keenan Marchesi, Patrick W. McLaughlin. May 2023. COVID-19 Working Paper: Food-Away-From-Home Acquisition Trends Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic, AP-113, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
The Rural Food-Away-from-Home Landscape, 1990–2019
Focusing on U.S. nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) counties as of 2019 and over the past 30 years since 1990, ERS examined the FAFH landscape across the United States—i.e., the availability of restaurants, cafeterias, food trucks and the like outside of the home. We focused on trends and differentiating features in FAFH access across the metropolitan divide and across the rural-urban continuum, using annual establishment-level data from the National Establishment Time Series (NETS) dataset. We found FAFH is generally less available in the most nonmetro counties. We also found, among the FAFH options in those rural nonmetro counties, there is a prevalence of national chain restaurants. However, this result does not hold uniformly. Counties with recreation as their primary industry tended to offer more FAFH options than rural counties with other leading industries, including nonmetro counties. Furthermore, there has been an expansion of FAFH in nonmetro counties, including the most rural nonmetro counties, led by growth in limited-service restaurants. These results could have implications for food access, overall health, and other consumer food metrics as the results relate to the food environment because FAFH generally offers a different nutritional profile than food at home and may provide additional convenience.
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Published by the Economic Research Service: Link
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Related publication: Limited-Service Restaurants Closing Gap With Full-Service Establishments in Rural United States
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Citation:
Keenan Marchesi, Anne T. Byrne, Trey Malone. March 2023. The Rural Food-Away-from-Home Landscape, 1990–2019, EIB-253, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
​COVID-19 Working Paper: National Trends in Food Retail Sales During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Findings from Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) Retail-Based Scanner Data
This report summarizes national trends in the level and composition of food retail sales associated with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The analysis primarily uses weekly retail-based scanner data that span the start of the pandemic through March 13, 2022. For the first 2 years of the pandemic, between the declaration of the national emergency concerning the pandemic on March 13, 2020, and March 13, 2022, real food retail sales increased by roughly 10 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels. These increases were especially driven by sales of meat products (including beef, pork, and seafood), although the relative composition of food retail sales roughly returned to pre-pandemic makeup as of March 2021. Real food retail sales during the second year of the pandemic, between March 13, 2021, and March 13, 2022, were 6.6 percent higher compared to pre-pandemic levels.
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Published by the Economic Research Service: Link
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Citation:
McLaughlin, P. W., Stevens, A., Dong, X., Chelius, C., Marchesi, K., & MacLachlan, M. (2022). COVID-19 Working Paper: National Trends in Food Retail Sales During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Findings from Information Resources, Inc.(IRI) Retail-Based Scanner Data. Economic Research Service, 2022. Administrative Publication Number (AP-108).
Comparing Food Sector Employment Headcount and Sales Data in the National Establishment Time Series Database to Federal Data
This report offers new information about employee counts and sales of the National Establishment Time Series (NETS) Database—which provides time-series data on establishments across all sectors, including grocery stores and food service outlets. It also compares NETS’s employment count to the U.S. Bureau of the Census’s County Business Pattern (CBP) at the national and State levels from 1998 to 2016 and compares NETS’s sales to ERS’s Food Expenditure Series (FES) at the national level from 1998 to 2019. Furthermore, this report re-estimates NETS’s sales numbers, enabling researchers to more accurately study food sales at a more localized level.
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Published by the Economic Research Service: Link
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Related publication: Recent Report Provides a New View of Food Sector Sales and Employee Counts in Proprietary Data
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Citation:
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Zeballos, Eliana, and Keenan Marchesi. September 2022. Comparing Food Sector Employment Headcount and Sales Data in the National Establishment Time Series Database to Federal Data, TB-1958, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
​COVID-19 Working Paper: The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Food-Away-From-Home Spending
This paper summarizes national changes in the frequency and dollar amount of U.S. consumers’ food-away-from-home (FAFH) purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis draws on frequently updated proprietary data sources to measure national FAFH trends in average monthly spending and the weekly number of store transactions. Both spending and transactions at restaurants fell substantially following the onset of the pandemic and remained below pre-pandemic levels more than 1 year later. Differences in the decline in spending and transactions across restaurant types and mealtimes are notable. Although restaurant restrictions loosened across the country in the first half of 2021, visits and spending have been slow to recover to their pre-pandemic levels.
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Published by the Economic Research Service: Link
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Related publication: Spending Gap Between Full-Service and Quick-Service Restaurants Widened During Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic
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Citation:
Marchesi, K., & McLaughlin, P. W. (2022). COVID-19 Working Paper: The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Food-Away-From-Home Spending. Economic Research Service, 2022. Administrative Publication Number (AP-100).
