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About Me

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Welcome! I’m Keenan Marchesi, an applied microeconomist with experience across academia, government, and industry. My research examines the U.S. food supply chain at the intersection of urban economics, food and nutrition policy, and industrial organization, asking how firms and policy interact along the supply chain to shape what consumers can access and eat. The complex nature of these issues requires expertise across the discipline, and my research aims to harmonize these areas and address the gaps in policy using spatial and applied econometric methods.

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This year I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Providence College. As a first-generation college student, I had professors who treated mentorship as part of the job, and that shapes how I teach. I want students to leave with economics as a working toolkit, not a set of formulas and theories.  Previously, I was an agricultural research economist at USDA’s Economic Research Service, where I led research on food markets and consumer choice and briefed senior USDA Official and the White House on the pandemics impact on the restaurant sector. I later joined Datassential, translating economic conditions in food service into guidance for industry clients.

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Outside of work, you’ll find me at my local pottery studio, ear deep in a fantasy novel, or out with my dog, Chipper.

Recent Publications

Investigating the Lasting Changes in Consumer Food Consumption and Acquisition Since the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic
COVID-19 Working Paper: Food-Away-From-Home Acquisition Trends Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic
Dollar store expansion and independent grocery retailer contraction
This paper examines the changes in food-at-home consumption and food-away-from-home consumption and acquisition in the United States from 2019—2024. Exploiting the variation in State-level policy actions and vaccine rollouts, this work provides a longer-term view of altered food consumption and acquisition behavior during and after the pandemic. The most recent period was positively associated with food-at-home consumption and negatively associated with total food-away-from-home consumption, relative to pre-pandemic, driven by changes in acquisition method. Additionally, results show heterogeneity in food-at-home consumption and food-away-from-home acquisition across different groups. This work provides insights on the sustained changes in food consumption since the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing policy responses disrupted how consumers in the US acquired food away from home, and little is known about how they continued to access these goods. This report summarizes national-level trends in dollars consumers spent from December 2019–February 2020 through April–June 2022 at quick-and full-service restaurants by service mode (on-premise, drive-thru, delivery, and carry-out) and acquisition and ordering method. Results show that while on-premises (eating inside a restaurant) spending fell at quick-and full-service restaurants, spending at full-service restaurants remained much lower than pre-pandemic spending levels. We found that consumers quickly adapted to other service modes, like delivery or drive-thru, and this offset many of the losses observed in spending at quick-service restaurants. We also observed that consumers increased spending via cell phone apps for carry-out and delivery orders at both types of restaurants relative to pre-pandemic spending. In short, while consumers’ restaurant spending largely returned to pre-pandemic levels, many of the ways that consumers interacted with quick-and full-service restaurants immediately following the onset of the pandemic remained.
This paper examines the effects of dollar store entry on independent grocery retailers in the United States between 2000 and 2019. We utilized an establishment‐level dataset comprising all grocery retailers and dollar stores in the country. Our findings indicate that dollar store entry is associated with a 5.7% decrease in sales, a 3.7% reduction in employment, and a 2.3% rise in the likelihood of independent grocery retailers quitting the business. These adverse entry effects are three times larger in rural than urban areas. Event studies indicate that the negative impact on sales and employment disappears gradually in urban areas but persists in rural communities. We document differences in treatment effects of dollar store entry across regions, retail formats, and time.
Client Presentation
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