Goetz, Stephan J.

September, 2022

By: Tian, Zheng ; Schmidt, Claudia ; Goetz, Stephan J.
We use state-level Census Household Pulse Survey data to examine the role of community food services such as food banks and pantries in reducing food insufficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Food insufficiency increased for all income classes during the pandemic, and especially for the lower and middle classes. We adopt a fixed effects filtered estimator to estimate the coefficients on time-invariant regressors in a fixed effects panel model. Estimation results suggest community food services contribute to mitigating food insufficiency, especially for the middle class and in the early months of the pandemic.

January, 2019

By: Cleary, Rebecca; Goetz, Stephan J.; McFadden, Dawn Thilmany; Ge, Houtian
Food hubs offer a novel solution to connect small and mid-sized local farms, which individually lack the scale to profitably market their products. Because many food hubs rely on grants and philanthropy to provide services and are not necessarily profit-driven, markets may unintentionally oversaturate due to overinvestment.We use a firm-entry model to estimate the average U.S. county population necessary for one, two, and three food hubs to break even. Our findings suggest that policy makers and philanthropists need to consider the carrying capacity of the local food environment and population prior to supporting additional food hubs.