Class of 1934 Robert Gordon Sproul Distinguished Professor in Agricultural Economics and Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics
Sofia Berto Villas-Boas is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at U C Berkeley. She holds the Class of 1934 Robert Gordon Sproul Chair in Agricultural Economics. Born in Portugal in 1971 she received her Ph.D. in Economics from U. C. Berkeley in May 2002 and an undergraduate degree in Economics from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. She teaches Econometrics in the ARE Ph. D. program and in the undergraduate major of Environmental Economics and Policy at the Rausser College of Natural Resources. 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.
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.
Publication Statistics and Google Citations
ORCID Link
Abitur, Deutsche Schule Lissabon, 1989. (Testimony:https://dslissabon.com/sofia-berto/) Video for 175th Anniversary (https://dslissabon.com/2023/09/alumni-ep-1/?lang=pt-pt)
B.A. Economics, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisboa, Portugal, 1994.
Ph.D. Economics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2002.
Sample of Recent Publications:
White, J., Scott Kaplan, Sanjay Basu, Kristine A. Madsen, Dean Schillinger, and Sofia B. Villas-Boas, 2023. “Impact and cost-effectiveness of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes in Oakland and San Francisco, 2015-2019.” PLOS Medicine,
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1....Villas-Boas, S. B., Justin S. White,Scott Kaplan,Renee Y. Hsia, 2023. ``Trends in depression risk before and during the COVID-19 pandemic," PLoS ONE 18(5): e0285282.. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285282
Carrera, Mariana and Sofia B. Villas-Boas, 2023. "Generic Aversion and Observational Learning in the Over-the-Counter Drug Market'' Forthcoming, American Economic Journal -Applied.
Sears, J., J. M. Villas-Boas, V. Villas-Boas, S. B. Villas-Boas, 2023. ``Are we #StayingHome to Flatten the Curve,'' American Journal of Health Economics, 9 (1): 72-95. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/721705
Peter Berck, Marshall Blundell, Gabriel Englander, Samantha Gold, Shelley He, Janet Horsager, Scott Kaplan, Molly Sears, Andrew Stevens, Carly Trachtman, Rebecca Taylor, and Sofia B. Villas-Boas.“Recycling Policies, Behavior and Convenience: Survey Evidence from the CalRecycle Program.” 2021. Applied
Economic Perspectives and Policy, Vol 43 (2), June 2021: Pages 641-658, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aepp.13117.Villas-Boas, Sofia B., Bonnet, Celine, Hilger, James, 2021. Random Utility Models, Wine, and Experts. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol 103 (2), March: Pages 663 - 681. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajae.12129?campaign=wol...
Bonnet, C., J. Hilger, and S. B. Villas-Boas, 2020. Reduced form evidence on belief updating under asymmetric information—consumers’ response to wine expert opinions, European Review of Agricultural Economics, Volume 47, Issue 5, December 2020, Pages 1668–1696,
https://academic.oup.com/erae/advance-article/doi/10.1093/erae/jbz054/58...Villas-Boas, S., K. Kiesel, J. Berning, H. Chouinard, J. McCluskey, 2019. “Consumer and Strategic Firm Response to Nutrition Shelf Labels,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 102 (2): 458-479.
Taylor, R. S. Kaplan, S. B. Villas-Boas, and K. Jung, 2019. “Soda Wars: Effect of a Soda Tax Election on Soda Purchases.” Economic Inquiry, vol 57 (3):. 1480-1496.
Villas-Boas, S. B., R. Taylor, E. Deakin, 2019. "Effects of Peer Comparisons on Low-Promotability Tasks: Evidence from a University Field Experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Volume 158 : 351-366.
Bonnet, C., C. Trachtman, M. VanDop, S. B. Villas-Boas, 2020. ""Food Markets’ Structural Empirical Analysis: A Review of Methods and Topics," European Review of Agricultural Economics, 47 (2): 819–847.
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, 73: 307-332. Link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10640-018-0264-6
Toledo, C. and S. B. Villas-Boas, 2019.“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,Volume 41, Issue 3: 519-541, . 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.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.
Keep it Causal Blog:
Feb, 2019. About Econometrics, Zion, Nike Stock Prices, co authored with Scott Kaplan.
Policy Take Away COVID paper, Link to NABE talk
