UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Food Product Recalls: Trends and Demand Impacts(2016) Tselepidakis, Elina; Lichtenberg, Erik; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Food product recalls, the removal of risky food products from the marketplace, can impose significant burdens for consumers, producers, and regulators. The purpose of this dissertation is to offer an in-depth investigation of the trends and demand impacts of food product recalls. The first objective is to analyze trends and patterns of food product recall events from 2004 to 2013. The analysis considers multiple factors, including the types of foods being recalled, the reasons for initiating the recalls, the severity of the risks posed by the recalled products, and the geographic distribution. The second objective is develop a general Bayesian model to illustrate how consumers form perceptions of risk based on personal experiences and external signals, such as recall events. The model illustrates frequently observed behavior following the release of negative information: an immediate change in behavior, followed by a gradual return to previous, routine behavior. The third objective is to estimate the impact of leafy green recall events on the demand for packaged leafy green products by analyzing disaggregated household purchasing data. The results of this analysis suggests that iceberg and romaine recall events negatively impacted demand for the implicated leafy green in the weeks immediately following the recall. The fourth objective is to estimate the impact of STEC-contaminated ground beef recall events on the demand for ground beef products, differentiating between recalls prompted by consumer illness investigations and those prompted by laboratory testing. The results suggest that the impacts of recalls prompted by consumer illnesses outbreaks were often greater in magnitude and lasted longer than the impacts of recalls prompted by pathogen testing.Item Development, Technology Adoption, and Social Networks(2011) Vasilaky, Kathryn Nadine; Vasilaky, Kathryn Nadine; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Agriculture remains a key component of economic development, but the methodology for how development policies are determined has changed for developing countries. In the last decade, the focus of economic growth in developing countries has shifted from country-wide prescriptions to testable micro-development programs at the local level. As international development focuses in on local programs, social networks have been identified as a key component for their effective deployment. This dissertation analyzes the effects of a social network-based intervention. It contributes to the economics literature on identifying social network effects by implementing a randomized encouragement design to develop social capital, while simultaneously introducing a new method of development training. The program implemented here is comprised of two parts, and was conducted with female-headed households in rural Uganda, that were growing a relatively new cash crop, cotton. The first part conducted social network-based information games in 20 sample villages, in which each participant was trained in one aspect of cultivating cotton, and encouraged to attain a full set of knowledge on growing cotton through her assigned learning networks. They were presented with two different incentives schemes for accumulating information: competitive and team incentives. The second portion of the program paired the surveyed individuals at random with other game participants. These pairs were encouraged to develop team goals across the growing season and a time schedule for networking as well as update and share their learned information from the games on a regular basis. The estimated effects of the SNI, which comprise this dissertation, include both the effects from the information games and the effects of the mentored pairing; that is, the impact of acquiring one information point and one new link. I compare the effects of this program to a standard agricultural training program that was concurrently conducted during this research, in which extension agents taught the same information that was presented in the information games but with a traditional classroom-based teaching method. My games analysis shows that females learn more when presented with competitive incentives. The total number of learning points learned during competitive incentives first order stochastically dominates the total number of learning points learned during team incentives. However, for the dissemination of one specific information point, team incentives are better at ensuring that a unique information point reaches the entire group. Difference in difference estimates, controlling for the training program, show that the overall SNI program had significant effects on the average farmer, with diminishing returns for higher yielding farmers. I find that these average effects are comparable to the effects of the conventional training program, but at a fifth of the implementation cost. A closer examination shows that the SNI program has its most significant effect for farmers growing around the average output when the program was started in 2009 (100-200 kgs/acre), while the Training program has its greatest and most significant impact for those yielding above the average output in 2009. Therefore, the two programs are not necessarily substitutes in how they effect change. My research shows that a competitive incentive structure coupled with social network-based learning serves as an effective paradigm for improving outcomes for the poorest producers.