Working Papers
[Food Demand] New Estimates of US Markups and Their Reactions to Aggregate Demand. Coauthored with Bulat Gafarov and Jens Hilscher.
Submitted. Presented at the 2023 SEA, 2024 AEA, 2025 CEA, and 2026 AEA annual meetings. You may download this paper at SSRN.
This paper proposes new estimates of time-varying US markups and investigates the contributions of aggregate demand to their dynamics. We proceed in two steps. First, we show that annual average markups can be nonparametrically estimated based on a locally-linear demand model. We apply a revenue-weighted instrumental variable approach to estimate region-specific time varying markups using US grocery price scanner data from 2001-2024. We find a secular trend rise and unconditional procyclical variation in markups. Second, using a dynamic panel model, we quantify the contributions of four main channels of conditional variation: income (real GDP and housing prices), the real interest rate, market concentration, and demographic trends. The income and real interest rate channels explain a large fraction of markup variation across markets and over time. Market concentration had only a small impact, while the demographic trend is insignificant. From 2008-2016 negative real interest rates increased markups counteracting downward pressure from the income channel. During COVID, higher housing prices and low interest rates pushed markups above the trend while tighter monetary policy helped them return to trend in 2024.
[Agricultural Production] The countervailing investment and rental-supply effects of securing land ownership: Theory and evidence from Nicaragua.
Submitted. Presented at the 2024 SEA, 2025 AEA, and 2026 MEA annual meetings. You may download the paper at SSRN
Securing land ownership can reduce rural poverty in agrarian societies with unequal land ownership by facilitating land rentals from large landholders to landless and smallholders. Based on an agricultural household model, I demonstrate that land ownership security may increase land-attached investments but dampen land rentals when there are non-security barriers to long-term land rental contracts. I also provide supporting evidence from Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Using spatial variation in credit supply shocks from financial crises, I find that participation in land security improvement programs led large landowners in less-affected districts to significantly increase agricultural credit use, expand land-attached investments, and reduce land rentals.
[Social Welfare] The countervailing investment and rental-supply effects of securing land ownership: Welfare implications for rural economies endowed with unequal land ownership distributions.
You may download the early draft here.
Securing land ownership has been hypothesized to yield significant gains in both agricultural output and poverty reduction in Latin American rural areas, where land ownership distributions have been highly unequal. These win-win economic gains largely hinge on the premise that security improvement will simultaneously boost land-attached investments and increase land rental supply to facilitate land access for the rural poor. However, Gong (2024) demonstrates that the investment effect will attenuate the rental-supply effect when non-security barriers to long-term land rental contracts are present. This paper employs a multi-agent simulation approach to investigate the extent to which the associated economic gains may be downsized for a typical unequal rural economy. Numerical results show that relative to the ideal case of no non-security barriers to long-term land rental contracts, after land ownership is fully secured: (i) the operational land under rental may experience a substantially smaller expansion or even a shrinkage; (ii) the wage rate may increase by a significantly smaller percentage accordingly; and (iii) both land-attached investments and agricultural output, however, may only witness a slightly smaller but still sizable increment. These findings indicate that non-security barriers to long-term land rental contracts may disproportionately diminish the welfare benefits of securing land ownership for the rural poor.
Ongoing Projects
Price dynamics of organic versus conventional fresh produce: Market, macroeconomic, and weather factors. Coauthored with Bulat Gafarov and Jens Hilscher.
Presented at the 2025 AAEA and SEA annual meetings.
Fresh produce is the largest category of organic food sales in the U.S. This paper studies the relative price dynamics of organic versus conventional produce from 2006 to 2023. Using retail scanner data, we find that the revenue-weighted average price of organic produce declined relative to conventional produce across major grocery markets beginning in 2017, with the exception of a brief uptick following the onset of COVID-19. Prior to 2017, the relative price exhibited substantial fluctuations without a clear trend. Our analyses show that macroeconomic and market factors—real interest rate, housing prices, unemployment, product supply and variety as well as retailer concentration—account for a substantial share of this variation, especially the post-2016 downward trend. In addition, weather conditions in major fruit- and vegetable-producing states—precipitation and temperature—contribute significantly to short-term price fluctuations and place upward pressure on the relative price.
The drought-induced deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Coauthored with Alankrita Goswami, Mahmoud Osman, and Nilesh Shinde.
Recent literature highlights climate variability, particularly drought, as a critical yet understudied driver of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon. Using high-resolution geospatial data, we document that increases in root-zone soil moisture deficits lead to higher deforestation within the same year, with no detectable within-year feedback from deforestation to local moisture flow once we condition on prior forest stock. The effect is substantially larger in municipalities with a higher prevalence of family farms. Consistent this heterogeneity, these municipalities experience an increase in forest-related environmental fines during periods of soil moisture deficits, suggesting greater engagement in illegal deforestation activities. We provide evidence on the underlying mechanism by showing that drought reduces agricultural output more sharply in these areas, indicating heightened economic distress. Finally, we find that improved access to credit partially mitigates drought-induced deforestation, pointing to a potential role for policy interventions in alleviating environmentally harmful coping responses.