TRADE: Dr Gaurav Khanna (University of California, San Diego)

A Taste for Immigration: Cuisine Diversity and What America Eats

Immigration has transformed what America eats. Across US cities, immigrants have expanded the variety of cuisines available to consumers, reshaping restaurant markets and the types of foods consumed. How this expansion affects welfare, however, depends on both the demand created by immigrant consumers and the supply of immigrant workers and entrepreneurs, and the extent to which new cuisines complement or substitute for existing ones. We document that immigrant communities are associated with greater cuisine diversity, larger market shares for immigrant cuisines, and disproportionate employment and entrepreneurship in restaurants serving their own cuisines. We then develop and estimate a model that separately identifies these demand and supply channels using data on restaurants, consumer mobility, menu text, immigration, and employment histories. The model quantifies how immigration changes cuisine diversity, consumer choice, and welfare, providing a new perspective on one of immigration's most visible effects on everyday life.