UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Joshua Reed, doctoral candidate in energy, environmental and food economics at Penn State, will give the talk “Rational Addiction to Ultra-Processed Food in the Context of Extreme Consumer Heterogeneity” at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 16, in 157 Hosler Building on the University Park campus. The event is free and open to the public.
Rational addiction models are one of the standard tools in the economic analysis of the markets for drugs, alcohol, tobacco and other potentially addictive goods.
“Rational addiction models have long been pivotal in understanding addictive behavior, yet empirical investigations often overlook the complexities inherent in household-level consumption dynamics,” Reed said.
Leveraging comprehensive scanner data from the Circana consumer network dataset and supplementary health data from the Medprofiler survey, Reed’s study provides a household-level analysis of rational addiction to ultra-processed food products and its implications for health outcomes. Reed introduces a novel individual coefficients strategy for estimating rational addiction models, which assess evidence of rational addiction in consumption patterns at the individual household level.
His findings reveal significant heterogeneity of rational addiction across various food products and households, with implications for public health initiatives. Furthermore, he explores the correlation between addictive behavior and health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and mental health disorders. By adopting a micro-scale perspective, his study offers insights into the effectiveness of policy interventions aimed at curbing addictive consumption and improving public health outcomes. Overall, his research contributes to the literature on rational addiction by offering empirically robust analysis and practical insights for informing policy interventions in the realm of public health economics.
Reed is a doctoral candidate in energy, environment and food economics in the College of Agricultural Sciences. His research focuses on consumer demand for food in the context of nutrition and marketing.
The talk is part of the Initiative for Energy and Environmental Economics and Policy (EEEPI) fall Seminar Series. View more information on EEEPI.