First of the Month: Grocers, Shoppers and Purchasing Power

Reception to follow.

Ebonya Washington is the Henry Kohn Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University. She specializes in public finance and political economy with research interests in the interplay of race, gender and political representation; the behavioral motivations and consequences of political participation; and the processes through which low-income Americans meet their financial needs. Her work has appeared in journals including the American Economic Review and Quarterly Journal of Economics. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

About Lecture

Using data from a large grocery chain, Professor Washington will discuss how the purchases of benefit recipients vary across the month and differ from the food choices of non-benefit recipients. She will also explore how stores take these patterns into account in adjusting their prices across the month and the implications of these findings for designing social safety net policies that protect the purchasing power of the poor.

About the Center for Public Policy in Diverse Societies

The Diversity Center promotes cutting-edge, inter-disciplinary research, educational opportunities and dialogue to improve the design and implementation of public policy in an increasingly complex and diverse society. The Center creates an intellectual focal point for research on the policy implications of diverse societies locally, nationally, and internationally.