Professor
Sofia Berto Villas-Boas is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at U C Berkeley. Born in Portugal in 1971 she received her Ph.D. in Economics from U. C. Berkeley in May 2002. Her research interests include industrial organization, consumer behavior, food policy, and environmental regulation. Her recent empirical work estimates the effects of policies on consumer behavior, such a bottled water tax, a plastic bag ban, and a soda tax campaign and its implementation. Other published work has focused on the economics behind wholesale price discrimination banning legislation, contractual relationships along a vertical supply chain, and identifying the role of those contracts in explaining pass-through of cost shocks along the supply chain into retail prices that consumers face. She has published in top economics and field journals such as Review of Economic Studies, Rand Journal of Economics, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Marketing Science, Management Science, and Review of Economics and Statistics.
B.A. Economics, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisboa, Portugal, 1994.
Ph.D. Economics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2002.
Sample of Recent Publications:
Hallstein, E., J. Hilger, A. Stevens, and S. B. Villa-Boas, 2018. "Measuring Willingness to Pay for Environmental Attributes in Seafood", Environmental and Resource Economics, forthcoming.
Toledo, C. and S. B. Villas-Boas, 2018.“Food Borne Disease Outbreaks, Consumer Purchases and Product Preferences: The Case of the 2010 Salmonella Egg Outbreak in the U.S.”, Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1093/aepp/ppy015.
Allain, M-L, C. Chambolle, S. Turolla, and S. B. Villas-Boas, 2017. “The impact of Retail Mergers on Food Prices: Evidence from France”, Journal of Industrial Economics, Volume 65, Issue 3, September:469–509. DOI: 10.1111/joie.12153.
Berck, P, A. Stevens, J, Moe-Lange, and S. B. Villas-Boas, 2016. "Measuring Consumer Responses to a Bottled Water Tax Policy." American Journal of Agricultural Economics 98 (4): 981-996;
doi: 10.1093/ajae/aaw037.Bonnet, C. and S. B. Villas-Boas, 2016. "“Asymmetric Consumer Price Responses and Asymmetric Cost Pass-Through.” European Review of Agricultural Economics, Volume 43, Issue 5, December: 781–804.
Taylor, R. and S. B. Villas-Boas, "Bans vs. Fees: Disposable Carryout Bag Policies and Bag Usage", Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy (2016) volume 38, number 2, pp. 351–372.
Taylor, R. and S. B. Villas-Boas, 2016. "Store Choice among Low Income Households" American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Volume 98, Issue 2: 513-532.
Chambolle, C. and S. B. Villas-Boas, 2015. “Buyer Power Through Producer Differentiation,” International Journal of Industrial Organization, Volume 43, November 2015, Pages 56–65.
