Residential demand-side response (DSR) is a key strategy for meeting the challenges facing the UK electricity system. Leveraging residential flexibility should help to enhance system reliability, reduce carbon emissions, support the integration of renewables into the energy mix and deliver a lower-cost electricity system. However, the viability of residential DSR hinges on two critical factors: consumers will first need to switch to DSR programmes in sufficient numbers and then successfully respond by adjusting their consumption patterns accordingly. This thesis explores how to optimise the impact of residential DSR by examining the enablers and constraints of uptake and response. While participation is primarily encouraged through financial incentives, studies suggest that some consumers may be willing to participate for nonfinancial reasons. As such, this thesis also explores how environmental and pro-social motivations could be leveraged to help promote uptake and response. The thesis contributes to the knowledge on DSR by testing UK consumer preferences for different programme models through a large-scale online survey and identifying measures which could help to maximise uptake. It also explores the potential afforded by dynamic information-only programmes through a trial based on available wind generation. The thesis further makes a theoretical contribution by exploring how the Fogg Behaviour Model (FBM) can be used to conceptualise the enablers and constraints of uptake and response. By mapping these factors to the FBM's core components of ability, motivation and trigger, the model is refined as a tool for understanding how to optimise the impact of residential DSR. The research reveals that information-only DSR programmes may represent a significant untapped resource. Approximately 8% of a representative sample of UK consumers indicated a preference for this model over more conventional price-based programmes; while trial households succeeded in reducing electricity consumption by 9.9% on average when asked to consume less and increasing consumption by 4.4% on average when asked to consume more. These promising findings may help to inform policy and programme design as the UK energy system evolves towards a renewables-based future.

Consumption of food away from home (FAFH) is widely believed to be a contributing factor to the current obesity crisis and other diet related problems in North America. At present, in Canada, a number of issues related to FAFH consumption such as the relationship between obesity and fast foods, trans-fats, sugar and sodium content of restaurant foods, and restaurant advertising for children are being widely discussed. In these discussions, it is apparent that the interrelationships between FAFH, nutrition and diet related diseases are complex. Therefore, there are significant gaps in our knowledge. In this study, a number of important research questions related to FAFH consumption were studied in order to provide a detailed understanding of FAFH purchase trends, nutrient demand trends, factors affecting these trends and to provide some idea of the possible effectiveness of proposed policy interventions in the area. In paper one of this study, a sample of Canadian FAFH purchases were analysed using a two stage demand model to examine the impact of industry advertising, households habit forming preferences and socio-demographic and economic variables. Given the unique method of restaurant categorization, results provide new and additional information of the impact of above variables in Canadian context. The second study examined the demand for selected nutrients in FAFH to understand factors affecting nutrient intake in FAFH foods focusing on chain restaurants. An innovative measure of nutrient content (nutrient density) was used in the analysis and study results provides interesting new information about nutrient consumption from chain restaurants in the FAFH market. The third study examined how some specific food industry changes in product formulations aimed at reducing trans-fatty acids (TFAs) could and have affected consumers overall diet quality and their demand for food away from home. This study provides some indications of effectiveness of the current trans-fat recommendations in Canada. In summary, this study is an empirical investigation of a number of questions related to Canadian FAFH consumption: What is the structure of the FAFH market in Canada? What are the households FAFH purchasing patterns? What is the impact of advertising and habit forming preferences and socio-economic and demographic factors on FAFH purchases? What are the nutrition profiles of the most popular menu items of chain restaurants? What are the factors affecting nutrient demand in FAFH foods? Would a specific food industry change in product formulation such as reducing TFAs have affect consumers overall diet quality and their demand for FAFH? In general, results from the three independent studies provide useful information to fill some of the gaps in our knowledge of FAFH consumption, especially on health and nutrition with implications for public policy. / Agricultural and Resource Economics

This study analyzes the economic and demographic drivers of household demand for at-home consumption of nonalcoholic beverages in 1999. Drivers of available intake of calories, calcium, vitamin C, and caffeine associated with the purchase of nonalcoholic beverages also are analyzed. The 1999 ACNielsen HomeScan Panel, purchased by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, is the source of the data for this project. Many different classifications of beverages were analyzed including milk(whole, reduced fat, flavored, and non-flavored), regular and low-calorie carbonated soft drinks, powdered soft drinks, isotonics(sports drinks), juices(orange, apple, vegetable, and other juices), fruit drinks, bottled water, coffee(regular and decaffeinated), and tea(regular and decaffeinated). Probit models were used to find demographic drivers that affect the choice to purchase a nonalcoholic beverage. Heckman sample selection models and cross tabulations were used to find demographic patterns pertaining to the amount of purchase of the nonalcoholic beverages. The nutrient analysis indicated that individuals receive 211 calories, 217 mg of calcium, 45 mg of vitamin C, and 95 mg of caffeine per day from all nonalcoholic beverages. A critical finding for the nutrient analysis was that persons within households below 130% of poverty were receiving more calories and caffeine from nonalcoholic beverages compared to persons within households above 130% of poverty. Likewise, persons in households below 130% of poverty were receiving less calcium and vitamin C from nonalcoholic beverages compared to persons in households above 130% of poverty. Price and cross-price elasticities were examined using the LA/AIDS model. Methodological concerns of data frequency, beverage aggregations, and censoring techniques were explored and discussed. Own-price and cross-price elasticities for the beverages were uncovered. Price elasticities by selected demographic groups also were investigated. Results indicated that price elasticities varied by demographics, specifically for race, region, and presence of children within the household. The information uncovered in this dissertation helps to update consumer demand knowledge and nutritional intake understanding in relation to nonalcoholic beverages. The information can be used as a guide for marketing strategists for targeting and promotion as well as for policy makers looking to improve nutritional intake received from nonalcoholic beverages.

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Thesis advisor: Arthur Lewbel / The dissertation consists of three essays on different aspects of the collective household models in the household economics literature. The first essay estimates a collective household model for evaluating the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) among older households. I use longitudinal Homescan data to identify SNAP-eligible food. I find that husbands have relatively stronger preferences for food than wives, and that household demand is affected by bargaining power (i.e., control over resources) within households. Failure to account for this difference in preferences and control leads to underestimates of older couples' total food demand, and of their implied response (at both intensive and extensive margins) to a counterfactual experiment of replacing SNAP with a cash transfer program. I find that most eligible older households spend more on SNAP-eligible food than would be allowed by their SNAP benefits. Their spending patterns suggest that their poor diet is mainly due to low income rather than tastes. Overall these findings imply that a SNAP comparable cash transfer can be an effective tool to achieve the goals of the SNAP program. The second essay is joint work with my advisor Arthur Lewbel. We first prove identification of coefficients in a class of semiparametric models. We then apply these results to identify collective household consumption models. We extend the existing literature by proving point identification, rather than the weaker generic identification, of all the features of a collective household (including price effects). Moreover, we do so in a model where goods can be partly shared, and allowing children to have their own preferences, without observing child specific goods. We estimate the model using Japanese consumption data, where we find new results regarding the sharing and division of goods among husbands, wives, and children. The third essay is a joint paper with Tomoki Fujii. We study the intra-household inequality in resource allocation and bargaining within Japanese couples without children. We exploit a unique Japanese dataset in which individual private expenditures, savings, and time use information are available. From the data, we find that on average, the husband enjoys 1.5 times more purely private expenditures than the wife. However, the data only provides resource allocation on purely private expenditures, while 68 percent of household expenditures are devoted to the family, i.e., joint expenditures. We refer to the collective household literature in order to recover the unobserved sharing of total household expenditures, including both private and public goods. We find that the model-predicted sharing pattern is moderately consistent with the individual expenditure data. However, the intra-household inequality would be underestimated if we only use the sharing in purely private expenditures from the data. We find that Japanese wives are relatively disadvantaged to their husbands, no matter in purely private expenditures, total household expenditures, or gains from marriage. The findings in this paper provides certain external validity in terms of the collective household model of consumption, which we argue should be widely adopted in analyzing individual welfare in multi-person households. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Household food budgets offer a window on consumers' demand for convenience. During the 1980s and 1990s, three shifts likely promoted an increase in the share of the food budget devoted to convenient meal options, namely meals out and prepared foods: the growing number of hours that women spent in paid work, the growing opportunity cost of women's time spent doing housework, and the drop in the price of food relative to all other goods. I test whether the impact of these economic trends (on food budget allocation) was mediated by a change in the impact of children on household meal allocation. I find support for this hypothesis in a model of food away expenditures, which likely reflects two unmeasured shifts. First, (own) child care and household production of meals apparently became substitutes rather than complements. Second, a range of both prepared foods and family-friendly restaurants became available. The growing demand for time-saving meal options, including frozen food and meals out, has important implications for a core determinant of living standards: the ability to harness scale economies from home production of meals. I test whether greater reliance on convenient meals reduced household-level economies of scale. Other factors could mediate against, or even offset such a loss, including technological advances in the production and distribution of food. Using Engel curve analyses, I find that scale economies fell from 1980 to 2000, thereby reducing living standards; my lower- and upper-bound estimates of the drop are 44 percent and 110 percent respectively. Economies of scale are not simply a function of household size and composition, as standard equivalence scaling techniques suggest; they are affected by the ways that households trade non-market work and market substitutes. This dissertation contributes to the small literature that challenges the validity of fixed-parameter equivalence scales, such as the per capita scale, which ignore household production. I first attach plausible values to scale parameters and then compare equivalent-income trajectories of parents and non-parents across (standard) fixed parameter and (non-standard) time-varying equivalence scales. I present plausible lower- and upper-bound estimates of the rise in income inequality between parents and non-parents.

This dissertation focuses on topics in areas of agricultural and food policy, international trade, agricultural markets and marketing. The dissertation is structured as three papers. The first paper, Chapter 1, evaluates the impact of agricultural trade policies. Imported shrimp, which comprises nearly ninety percent of all United States shrimp consumption, have become the subject of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations in the past decade. I estimate the import demand for shrimp in the United States from 1999-2014, using the Barten’s synthetic model. I test the hypothesis of possible structural breaks in the import demand introduced by various trade policies: antidumping/countervailing duty investigations and impositions, and import refusals due to safety and environmental issues. Results show that these import-restricting policies have significant effects on the import shrimp demand, indicating that the omission of them would lead to biased estimates. Chapter 2, the second paper, examines how the burden of state cigarette tax is divided between producers/retailers and consumers, by using the Nielsen store-level scanner data on cigarette prices from convenience stores over the period 2011–2012. Cigarette taxes were found more than fully passed through to retail prices on average, suggesting consumers pay excess burden and market power exists in the cigarette industry. Utilizing information on the attributes of cigarette products, we demonstrated that tax incidence varied by brand and package size: pass-through rates for premium brands and carton-packaged cigarettes are higher than those for discount brands and cigarettes in packs, respectively, indicating possibilities of different demand elasticities across product tiers. Chapter 3, the third paper, focuses on identifying the demographic characteristics of households buying organic coffee, by examining the factors that influence the probability that a consumer will buy organic coffee, and which factors affect the amount organic coffee purchased. Using nationally representative household level data from 55,470 households over the period of 2011 to 2013 (Nielsen Homescan), and a censored demand model, we find that economic and demographic factors play a crucial role in the household choice of purchasing organic coffee. Furthermore, households are less sensitive to own-price changes in the case of organic coffee versus conventional coffee.

This thesis explores the workings of co-operation. It proceeds by way of a two-case comparative study, where the units of comparison are local consumer co-operatives: the Newcastle upon Tyne Co-operative Society Ltd., situated in the north-east of England, and Konsumentföreningen Solidar in Malmö, in the south-west of Sweden. We get to follow the two societies through minutes from member meetings, and from several other data sources, from their dates of birth to 1970. This material is utilised for cross-case and within-case comparisons as we follow the interaction between the societies and their environments, between organisational structure and decision-making, and between different factions within the societies. The primary purpose is to charter, understand, and explain the complexities brought out by the empirical inquiry. But in doing so, we also discern more general underlying principles for variations in the workings of co-operation. While this makes the thesis into an exploratory endeavour, it also contains an attempt to map the historiography of co-operation in Britain and Sweden: themes and research questions are construed so as to make a contribution to both literatures. One such contribution is the description and analysis of two separate organisational logics, of their dynamics, conditions, effects, and development over time.

There are many differentiated product industries in which firms offer multiple products in the same market. In making strategic decisions regarding entry, quality and quantity to be supplied for their multiple products firms must consider the competition with rivals as well as cannibalization of their own products that are close substitutes. In this setting, understanding the relationship between the behavior of consumer demand and firms decisions' regarding product characteristics and strategic variables like advertising are fundamental issues in industrial organization. This dissertation empirically explores these fundamental issues in the pharmaceutical and airline industries. The first paper of my dissertation estimates consumer demand for different anti-cholesterol drugs using panel data on a nationally representative sample of individuals who were diagnosed with cholesterol problems in the period 1996-2002. The data provides detailed information on individuals' medical conditions, medical and drug insurance coverage, drug purchases (if any), and other demographic and medical information. Individuals choose whether to purchase an anti-cholesterol rug and, if so, which drug to buy. The model permits flexible substitution patterns among drug choices and persistence in those choices by incorporating both observed and unobserved consumer heterogeneity. The estimates suggest that lower income patients without prescription drug insurance are very price sensitive: they are less likely to use drugs and, if they do use them, they tend to purchase the less expensive drugs. I find that roughly 500 thousand individuals without drug insurance who are currently not purchasing anti-cholesterol drugs would do so in the counterfactual world in which they are given the standard co-payment plan. The second paper also looks at consumer demands for anti-cholesterol drugs. While the first paper focused on the differentiated products, this paper explores the market expansion effects of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA). The study combines the individual data used in the first paper with monthly expenditure data on DTCA for the period 1996-2002. The dynamic demand model estimated in this paper explores the heterogeneous effects of DTCA. Overall, I find a positive effect from DTCA with short term elasticity of 0.107. Through persistence in consumer demand this effect lasts over multiple time periods. I find that individuals not taking a cholesterol drug respond more to advertising than those on the drug. In addition, I find that less educated individuals, those that may be unaware of their health condition, and those without health insurance are most responsive to DTCA. Finally, the third paper studies the effect of product ownership and quality on entry in the airline industry. Specifically, this paper empirically examines the decision of an airline to offer high quality nonstop service between cities given that the airline may or may not be offering lower quality one-stop service. I find that airlines that offer one-stop service through a hub are less likely to enter that same market with nonstop service than those that do not. In addition, the quality of the one-stop service is another determinant of entry. Airlines are more likely to enter a market with nonstop service if their own or their rival's one-stop service in the market are of lower quality. / text

Master´s thesis deals with problems of consumer behaviour in the Czech republic. Theoretical part of thesis defines basic concepts and data, which relate to consumer demand and information necessary to understand the analysis part. The following part deals with critical analysis of consumer basket and spending costs of households in different commodities. Analytic part is also aimed at economic development and according to it we can deduce reactions of households and related consumer behaviour. At the end the thesis is completed by suggestions to reduce excess spending expenditures, which are recommendation for citizens of the Czech republic.