Social determinants of panic buying behaviour amidst COVID-19 pandemic: The role of perceived scarcity and anticipated regret

Panic buying behaviour is inherently undesirable due to its detrimental impact on community's resources and disruptions to supply chain systems. The prevailing COVID-19 pandemic has seen a resurgence of this phenomenon across the world, leaving supermarkets in stockout situations. While panic buying is largely reasoned as a psychological reaction to an extreme event, it is also a socially relevant behaviour as our perception of a crisis can be shaped by our observations and interactions within the society. The social determinants of panic buying behaviour, particularly on how these factors heighten one's perception of scarcity, and trigger panic buying behaviour, are studied. A theoretical model is developed to explain panic buying behaviour in a social context by synthesizing various social and behavioural theories, and the inter-relationship among the latent constructs is analysed using the structural equation modelling approach. Accordingly, an online survey was administered and analysis of the data confirmed that non-coercive social influence, social norm and observational learning directly influence one's perception of scarcity. Additionally, perceived scarcity can motivate panic buying behaviour directly or indirectly through feelings of anticipated regret. This study has contributed to the limited literature on panic buying. Understanding the underlying mechanisms of panic buying will aid policymakers and businesses in developing intervention or support strategies to cope with such behaviour.     

The non-linear response of US state-level tradable and non-tradable inflation to oil shocks: The role of oil-dependence

This paper investigates the effects of oil supply, oil-specific consumption demand, oil inventory demand shocks, and global economic activity shocks on state-level tradable and non-tradable inflation in the US. We use oil shock data following the work of Baumeister and Hamilton (2019) and estimate both linear and non-linear impulse responses using a lag-augmented local projections model in a panel context. Our results from a linear model show that both supply and demand-side oil shocks have a statistically significant impact on both types of inflation. While supply, global economic activity, and demand shocks have a greater impact on tradable inflation, non-tradable inflation responds more strongly to inventory shocks. Further, the non-linear model results provide evidence of heterogeneity in the magnitude and persistence of impact between high- and low-oil dependence regimes. Non-tradable inflation is more sensitive to nearly all components of oil price shocks in the high-oil dependence regime.     

Credit Crunch and Downward Nominal Wage Rigidities

Through the lens of a DSGE model, I find that financial shocks in conjunction with downward nominal wage rigidities (DNWR) are important features in explaining the degree of asymmetry that U.S. business cycles exhibit. Financial shocks are constructed as residuals of the borrowing constraint faced by firms in a similar fashion to Jermann and Quadrini (2012). The effects of these shocks on aggregate quantity variables are amplified by DNWR, especially during the global financial crisis. Moreover, my model explains a large part of the upward shift in the labor wedge that occurred during this recession.     

金融冲击、去杠杆与中国宏观经济波动

去杠杆是我国供给侧结构性改革的重要任务之一,而平稳有序地去杠杆是防范化解金融风险的关键:本文通过梳理我国在2016年前后的经济数据,刻画了去杠杆进程中我国宏观经济存在的“扩张—收缩”波动特征。基于此现实,本文在金融加速器理论基础上构建金融经济周期模型,尝试利用违约成本的变化引入金融冲击,从未预期和预期冲击两个视角理解去杠杆背景下中国的宏观经济波动。模型数值模拟结果表明,去杠杆过程前后信贷、杠杆率以及信用利差等重要宏观经济变量的波动不仅源自未预期违约成本的变化。违约成本预期的变化同样也可以很好地解释近年来我国重要宏观经济变量的“扩张—收缩”波动特征,为理解我国去杠杆进程中的宏观经济波动提供了一个新视角。基于本文结果,政府实施去杠杆政策时不仅应充分考虑违约成本的实际变动,还应重视金融机构的预期因素。     

A model of the U.S. food system: What are the determinants of the state vulnerabilities to production shocks and supply chain disruptions?

We adapt a Ricardian general equilibrium model to the setting of U.S. domestic agri-food trade to assess states’ vulnerability to adverse production shocks and supply chain disruptions. To this end, we analyze how domestic crop supply chains depend on fundamental state-level comparative advantages—which reflect underlying differences in states’ cost-adjusted productivity levels—and thereby illustrate the capacity of states to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of such disruptions to the U.S. agricultural sector. Based on the theoretical framework and our estimates of the model's structural parameters obtained using data on U.S. production, consumption, and domestic trade in crops, we undertake simulations to characterize the welfare implications of counterfactual scenarios depicting disruptions to (1) states’ agricultural productive capacity, and (2) interstate supply linkages. Our results emphasize that the distributional impacts of domestic supply chain disruptions hinge on individual states’ agricultural productive capacities, and that the ability of states to mitigate the impacts of adverse production shocks through trade relies on the degree to which states are able to substitute local production shortfalls by sourcing crops from other states.