Table N5: Effect of SNAP-benefit changes on prices, robustness checks

|VARIABLES|(1)|(2)|(3)|(4)|(5)<br>Lo|(6)<br>g price index|(7)|(8)|(9)|(10)|(11)|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Log benefts|0.0849***<br>(0.0251)|0.0924***<br>(0.0286)||||||||||
|Log benefts per population|||0.0863***<br>(0.0224)|0.0656***<br>(0.0206)|0.0811***<br>(0.0212)|0.0711***<br>(0.0229)|0.0704**<br>(0.0323)|0.0855***<br>(0.0240)|0.101***<br>(0.0259)|0.0866***<br>(0.0244)|0.0893***<br>(0.0233)|
|Observations|382524|382524|382524|382524|2301|307750|836631|382524|382524|353712|353712|
|R-squared|0.898|0.895|0.899|0.888|0.963|0.883|0.931|0.901|0.899|0.900|0.900|
|Prob _>_ F|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|
|Number of units|7970|7970|7970|7970|48|6429|7153|7970|7970|7369|7369|
|Number of clusters|48|48|48|48|48|1050|48|48|48|42|42|
|First stage F-stat|17.328|15.502|19.798|43.623|19.874|21.093|21.529|20.753|33.105|12.518|12.518|
|No population controls||X||||||||||
|Store revenue weights|||X|||||||||
|Population weights||||X||||||||
|State population weights|||||X|||||||
|County-level benefts||||||X||||||
|Full sample|||||||X|||||
|Remove disaster payments||||||||X||||
|Policy controls|||||||||X|||
|Recalculate SUA||||||||||X||
|Update SUA|||||||||||X|

Notes: Robust standard errors are in parentheses, clustered by state. *** p _<_ 0.01, ** p _<_ 0.05, * p _<_ 0.1. Control variables as well as store and period fixed effects are included. Weights are fixed to the pre-period of 2006m1. Population weights refer to regressing with county-level population weights. State population weights refer to collapsing observations to the state-level and regressing with state population weights. County-level benefits refer to using county-level benefits and county-level synthetic benefits for the set of states that report benefits at the county-level. Full sample refers to using the entire sample from 2006-2015. Removing disaster payments refers to removing any variation in both benefits and participants due to disaster relief events. Policy controls refer to state-year measures of amounts paid out by transfer programs available from the BEA. The transfer amounts are logged and these programs include social security, other retirement and disability insurance transfers, Medicare, Medicaid and other vendor payments, military medical insurance, SSI, EITC, other income maintenance programs such as TANF and WIC, state unemployment insurance, other unemployment insurance, Veterans’ benefits, education and training assistance, other government transfers, transfers from nonprofit institutions, and transfers from businesses. Recalculate the SUA and update the SUA refer to the estimated effects from a specification in which benefits per population are interacted with an indicator whether states recalculate the SUA using utility data, or update the SUA relative to a base each year using the fuel CPI respectively.

Table N6: Effect of SNAP-benefit changes on prices, alternative price indices

|Method|(1)<br>Default|(2)<br>Alternative weights|(3)<br>Tornqvist|(4)<br>One-stage|(5)<br>Geometric|(6)<br>Fixed|(7)<br>Fixed, posted price|(8)<br>NCP|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|VARIABLES||||Log pri|ce index||||
|Log benefts per population|0.0740***|0.0813***|0.0700***|0.0786***|0.0767***|0.0800***|0.0777***|0.0838***|
||(0.0216)|(0.0234)|(0.0213)|(0.0240)|(0.0234)|(0.0273)|(0.0245)|(0.0244)|
|Observations|382524|382524|382524|382524|382524|352188|352188|331119|
|R-squared|0.919|0.915|0.917|0.915|0.899|0.891|0.882|0.860|
|Prob _>_ F|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|0.000|
|Number of units|7970|7970|7970|7970|7970|7338|7338|6899|
|Number of clusters|48|48|48|48|48|48|48|48|
|First stage F-stat|20.194|20.194|20.194|20.194|20.194|18.680|18.680|18.714|

Notes: Robust standard errors are in parentheses, clustered at the state level. *** p _<_ 0.01, ** p _<_ 0.05, * p _<_ 0.1. Control variables as well as store and period fixed effects are included. Details on each of the index construction methods used above are shown in Appendix Section D.

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