Chen ZhuChina Agricultural University | CAU · College of Economics and Management
Chen Zhu
PhD in Agricultural Economics / BS in Biology
About
18
Publications
5,918
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
126
Citations
Introduction
Personal website: http://zhuchen.org.cn/
Research interests: Food and Health Economics, Human Capital, Genoeconomics.
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
January 2017 - present
January 2015 - present
July 2013 - December 2016
Education
August 2009 - May 2013
August 2007 - May 2009
August 2003 - June 2007
Publications
Publications (18)
This article examines whether or not a reduction in consumer search cost for nutritional information increases the probability
that heterogeneous consumers will choose healthier food products. Empirical results from the ready-to-eat breakfast cereal
(RTEC) market confirm the conceptual analysis that lowering information cost via simplified nutritio...
Voluntary nutrition labeling, a means of nutrition quality disclosure, was introduced in the U.S. over the last decade by leading food manufacturers, primarily in the form of front-of-package (FOP) labeling. This article examines how consumer responses to FOP labeling via product participation and information spillovers shift consumer demand across...
Background:
Alcohol use has been linked to a number of physical conditions, but the relationship between alcohol drinking and depression, one of the most common mental disorders that is a significant contributor to the global burden of disease, is still under debate. We aim to help fill the literature gap on the causal effect of alcohol use on dep...
个体经济行为的决策机制一直是经济学科的研究重点。遗传经济学是在传统经济学原理基础之上，运用现代遗传学方法分析人类社会经济行为特征的一门新兴交叉学科。通过梳理发现，遗传经济学的学术价值体现在四个主要方面：第一，遗传经济学是对人类行为决策研究由精神层面向物质层面的进一步拓展；第二，遗传经济学能够帮助识别和分离后天社会经济因素与先天禀赋因素对个体的影响；第三，遗传经济学能够帮助进行因果推断；第四，遗传经济学研究结论能够“反哺”自然科学研究。我国当前社会经济的进步与科学技术水平的提升，为遗传经济学研究发展既提出了现实需要，又创造了前提条件。本文为经济学界了解如何从基因角度揭示个体行为决策内在机制提供重要的理论框架和科学工具。
Following domestication in the lower Yangtze River valley 9400 years ago, rice farming spread throughout China and changed lifestyle patterns among Neolithic populations. Here, we report evidence that the advent of rice domestication and cultivation may have shaped humans not only culturally but also genetically. Leveraging recent findings from mol...
This article investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic and related public health measures affected the consumption of food away from home (FAFH) among Chinese consumers. We obtained access to the complete sales records from a major restaurant chain in China, for 111 sites located in 12 cities, covering over 5.6 million high-frequency dining transactio...
Individual food choices and consumption are closely relating to one’s diet, nutrition, and health. Using the case of alcoholic beverages, this study extends the random-utility framework by incorporating genetic information into consumer demand models, and demonstrates the significant impact of genetic factors on individual food choice decisions in...
This study uses a Mendelian randomization approach to resolve the difficulties of identifying the causal relationship between height and earnings by using a unique sample of 3,427 respondents from mainland China with sociodemographic information linked to individual genotyping data. Exploiting genetic variations to create instrumental variables for...
A series of safety incidents related to domestically-produced infant formulas (DIFs) almost destroyed Chinese consumers' confidence in domestic dairy products. Understanding consumer confidence and its effect on consumption behavior is important to restore consumer confidence and enhance the competitiveness of domestic diary industry. This article...
In genetics, heterosis refers to the phenomenon that cross-breeding within species leads to offspring that are genetically fitter than their parents and exhibit improved phenotypic characteristics. Based on the theory of heterosis and existing genetic evidence, offspring of “hybrid” marriages (spouses originating from different states/provinces/cou...
The expansion of private labels, or store brands, has transformed consumer choice sets and competition in retail markets, prompting manufacturers to fight back with renewed pricing and product and promotion strategies to forestall further private label expansion. This article examines the spillover effects of television advertising on brand-level c...
We examine the impact of four policy options on consumption of carbonated soft drinks (CSDs) by estimating a random-coefficient discrete-choice model of demand. Policy simulations using demand estimates indicate that the impacts of banning television advertising, limiting container size, and limiting calories on total consumption would be similar—a...
This study examines the effects of television advertising on consumer demand for carbonated soft drinks using a random coefficients logit model (BLP) with household and advertising data from seven U.S. cities over a three year period. We find that advertising decreases the price elasticity of demand, indicating that advertising plays predominantly...
In 2007 this analysis reveals that the total impact of Connecticut’s agricultural industry on the state economy ($212 billion Gross State Product) was up to $3.5 billion, measuring the value of agricultural output as statewide sales generated directly from the industry and through spillover effects on other industries. In addition, the industry con...
Projects
Projects (8)
Previous studies in food choice and dietary behavior have shown that the consumer food choice decision, as a complex human behavior, to be a function of demographic, socioeconomic, psychological and physiological profiles of the individual who makes a choice and properties of available food alternatives. However, little is known about whether genetic factors play a role in determining consumer behavior. This paper attempts to bring together both conventional and novel genetic components to uncover the determinants of individual decision making and predict consumer choice by building a two-layer meta-machine learning algorithm. We use consumer choice of alcoholic beverages in a discrete choice experiment as a case study. Our results reveal that genetic factors do contribute to the decision process and alcohol choice of respondents, and machine learning algorithms improve the out-of-sample predictive accuracy of consumer choices by 53% than the conventional statistical model of MNL (from 46.69% to 71.34%).
Numerous complex behavioral traits and economic preferences have been recognized to have a genetic ground by recent developments in genome-wide association studies during the past few years, such as educational attainment, household income, risk attitudes, time discounting rates, and even political preferences. With the rapid evolution in personal genetic testing techniques, it is now practically affordable to collect high-quality individual genotyping data and integrate into economic studies. This project documents our recent empirical studies that incorporate both conventional and novel genetic data.
We investigate the causal relationship between alcohol use and various health outcomes by utilizing a Mendelian randomization (MR) design on the genetic variants of ALDH2 rs671 and ADH1B rs1229984 in East Asian populations.
