How Are SNAP Benefits Spent? Evidence from a Retail Panel
利用零售交易记录面板数据，研究发现SNAP福利用于购买合格食品的边际消费倾向为0.5-0.6，远高于现金，且家庭不遵循货币可替代性，支持心理账户理论。
We use a novel retail panel with detailed transaction records to study the effect of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on household spending. We use administrative data to motivate three approaches to causal inference. The marginal propensity to consume SNAP-eligible food (MPCF) out of SNAP benefits is 0.5 to 0.6. The MPCF out of cash is much smaller. These patterns obtain even for households for whom SNAP benefits are economically equivalent to cash because their benefits are below their food spending. Using a semiparametric framework, we reject the hypothesis that households respect the fungibility of money. A model with mental accounting can match the facts.