
Success: what happens when America's food banks embrace free-market economics [pdf] - c_prompt
http://conference.nber.org/confer/2015/MDf15/Prendergast.pdf
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tl/dr:

Feeding America [1] is a network of food banks that feeds more than 46 million
people. In 2005, four professors at the University of Chicago helped replace
their centralized distribution system with an auction-based one, allocating
"shares" to each bank to bid on donated food.

From The Week [2]:

"Initially, there was plenty of resistance. As one food bank director told
Canice Prendergast, an economist advising Feeding America, "I am a socialist.
That's why I run a food bank. I don't believe in markets. I'm not saying I
won't listen, but I am against this." But the Chicago economists managed to
design a market that worked even for participants who did not believe in it.
Within half a year of the auction system being introduced, 97 percent of food
banks won at least one load, and the amount of food allocated from Feeding
America's headquarters rose by over 35 percent, to the delight of volunteers
and donors."

The end result has been an improvement over the centralized scheme, whereby "a
lot of food rotted in places where it was not needed, while many shelves in
other food banks stood empty."

[1] [http://www.feedingamerica.org/](http://www.feedingamerica.org/)

[2] [https://theweek.com/articles/580341/what-happens-when-
americ...](https://theweek.com/articles/580341/what-happens-when-americas-
sovietstyle-food-banks-embrace-freemarket-economics)

