declining values and the afternoon effect evidence from art auctions we study the order of sale in art auctions the final bid relative to the auctioneer s estimated price declines throughout the course of an auction a theoretical model shows that in an auction ordered by declining valuation even in the presence of risk neutral strategic bidders the price received relative to the estimate for later items in an auction should be less than the price relative to the estimate for earlier items furthermore ordering heterogeneous items by value maximizes revenue for the auctioneer

qualitative assessment of eco labels on fresh produce in flanders belgium highlights a potential intention performance gap for the supply chain abstract when it comes to making sustainable food purchasing choices consumers trust on information provided to them by eco labels this article studies the labels for fresh produce available to consumers in flanders belgium concluding that the existing labelling landscape fails at enabling consumers to make adequate decisions for purchasing environmentally sound food a consumer survey supports the need for additional information on the sustainability of fruits and vegetables a potential intention performance gap is found for producers and in the wider sense for the entire supply chain since current labels found on fresh produce are input or practice based labels farmers adhering to those labels can be considered as having the intention to produce sustainably however this intention alone cannot guarantee good environmental performance in order to close the potential intention performance gap for the supply chain and provide more adequate information to consumers we conclude that performance based labels covering the entire food chain of fresh produce using the life cycle assessment approach lca and including situational parameters such as time of consumption origin and production and distribution mode are indispensable

socio economic characteristics and the effect of taxation as a health policy instrument abstract this paper analyses the quantitative effects of using economic instruments in health policy on the basis of price elasticities calculated from estimated demand systems the nutritional effects of various taxation schemes are compared for households in different age groups and social classes focusing on the consumption of saturated fats fibre and sugar it is generally found that the impact of price instruments is stronger for lower social classes than in other groups of the population with regard to age groups it is mostly the youngest that decrease their demand for saturated fat in response to price changes while it is mostly the middle aged who exhibit price responsiveness in their demand for sugar these groups are however not considered as key target groups for dietary regulation thus tax instruments may be effective in improving diets on average but the design of the instruments and the targeting of vulnerable groups with special needs should be done with care it should be noted that a tax on a single nutrient or food may have undesired effects on the demand for other food components though this may be avoided by introducing taxes subsidies on several food products simultaneously

defining the rebound effect abstract this paper gives rigorous definitions of the rebound effect not only in the well described single commodity case khazzoom 1980 the energy journal 1 4 21 40 but also for a multiple commodity case it is shown that the familiar laws for the single case do not hold for the multiple case the paper describes the state of the art of empirical estimation of the rebound effect with special focus on the estimates done for the netherlands we conclude that according to every definition empirical evidence shows that the re is probably small between 0 and 15

shopping around how households adjusted food spending over the great recession over the great recession real wages stagnated and unemployment increased concurrently food prices rose sharply outstripping growth in food expenditure and leading to a reduction in calories purchased this has led to concern about rising food poverty we study british households to assess how they adjusted to changes in the economic environment we show they switched to cheaper calories implying food consumption was smoother than expenditure we use longitudinal data to quantify the way households lowered their per calorie spending and show they done this in part by increasing shopping eort and without lowering the nutritional quality of

testing for price anomalies in real estate auctions this paper reports on the results of an auction sale of 83 condominium apartment units in new jersey at the auction every unit was hammered down but unknown to the 2 348 registered bidders 40 of the sales fell through prices in the subsequent sale of condominium units in face to face negotiations resulted in identical units selling for 13 less than they fetched at auction and the discount was largest for those units hammered down early in the auction these results are inconsistent with the usual predictions from the theory of common value auctions and suggest that uninformed bidders in this auction may have been the subject of a winner s curse which generated considerable profit for the seller this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from ano this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

design of a climate tax on food consumption examples of tomatoes and beef in sweden abstract this study examined appropriate design of efficient climate taxes on consumption of food by constructing a simple theoretical model and exemplifying the results using the examples of tomatoes and beef in sweden the theoretical results showed that for the tax to be efficient i existing taxes on greenhouse gases ghgs should be considered when calculating the climate impact in order to avoid double taxation and ii taxes should be differentiated between ghg here carbon dioxide co2 methane ch4 and nitrous oxide n2o because of their differing climate impacts the calculations of climate taxes on tomatoes and beef in sweden indicated considerable differences in the tax level depending on whether conditions i and ii were considered or not the commonly applied approach in the literature on climate taxes on food i e taxing carbon dioxide equivalents co2e using global warming potential over 100 years gwp100 and neglecting existing taxes on ghg emissions results in a tax that is 1 4 2 8 times higher than the efficient tax for tomatoes and a tax that is between 30 lower and 20 higher than the efficient tax for beef despite the relatively low variations in the climate tax on beef estimated reduction in emissions from beef ranged between 23 and 35 depending on choice of tax the price increases on food due to a climate tax and associated effects on emissions can thus show large variation depending on the tax calculation method

assessing the importance of health and nutrition related factors on food demand a variable preference investigation the importance of health nutrition related factors and demographics on food consumption is assessed based on consumer demand using a variable preferences approach results of the models show that diet disease individual s race region of residence urbanization education and perceived importance of taste influence the consumption of various food groups economic and policy implications of the results are discussed in the paper

consumer response to commodity specific and broad based promotion programs for fruits and vegetables generic promotion activities have traditionally been used for individual agricultural commodities yet there is renewed interest in implementing a mandatory broad based promotion program for all fruits and vegetables here we use data from an experiment that introduce subjects to various promotional efforts for fruits and vegetables to estimate the shift and rotational effects of advertising econometric results indicate that commodity specific promotional efforts may not be effective at increasing demand for fruits and vegetables after controlling for various demographic differences among treatments our results show that consumers valuation of fruits and vegetables was highest among subjects exposed to broad based advertisements copyright 2011 oxford university press

endogeneity in brand choice models applications of random utility models to scanner data have been widely presented in marketing for the last 20 years one particular problem with these applications is that they have ignored possible correlations between the independent variables in the deterministic component of utility price promotion etc and the stochastic component or error term in fact marketing mix variables such as price not only affect brand purchasing probabilities but are themselves endogenously set by marketing managers this work tests whether these endogeneity problems are important enough to warrant consideration when estimating random utility models with scanner panel data our results show that not accounting for endogeneity may result in a substantial bias in the parameter estimates

beggar thy neighbor advertising theory and application to generic commodity promotion programs profits from generic advertising by a producer group often come partly at the expense of producers of closely related commodities the resulting tendency toward excessive advertising is exacerbated by check off funding to analyze this beggar thy neighbor behavior we compare a scenario where different producer groups cooperate and choose their advertising expenditures jointly to maximize the sum of profits across the groups and a scenario where they optimize independently in an illustrative example using 1998 data for u s beef and pork the noncooperatively chosen expenditure on beef and pork advertising is more than three times the cooperative optimum copyright 2001 oxford university press

an empirical assessment of endogeneity issues in demand analysis for differentiated products this article explores the issue of price and expenditure endogeneity in empirical demand analysis the analysis focuses on the u s carbonated soft drink market we test the null hypothesis that price and expenditures are exogenous in the demand for carbonated soft drinks using an almost ideal demand system aids specification we strongly reject exogeneity for both prices and expenditures we find that accounting for price expenditures endogeneity significantly impacts demand elasticity estimates we also evaluate the implications of endogeneity issues for testing weak separability over the last few decades strong linkages between economic theory and econometric methods have stimulated much empirical analysis of consumer behavior e g deaton and muellbauer 1980b the basic approach involves estimating marshallian demand functions expressing quantities consumed as functions of prices and household expenditures the usual practice is to treat prices and expenditure as exogenous variables in this article we question the validity of these exogeneity assumptions especially when focusing on the demand for differentiated products 1 this is particularly important to the extent that food consumption typically involves differentiated products in market economies we also examine the interactions between endogeneity of prices expenditure in demand systems and the testing for weak separability of consumer preferences

units of measurement and the stone index in demand system estimation the stone index typically used in estimating linear almost ideal demand systems is not invariant to changes in units of measurement which may seriously affect the approximation properties of the model a modification to the stone index or use of a regular price index instead are both desirable practices in estimating linear ai models

farm subsidies and obesity in the united states national evidence and international comparisons abstract many commentators have claimed that farm subsidies have contributed significantly to the obesity epidemic by making fattening foods relatively cheap and abundant but u s farm policies have generally small and mixed effects on farm commodity prices which in turn have even smaller and still mixed effects on the relative prices of more and less fattening foods other factors have had much more influence on reducing the farm prices of food commodities and the consumer prices of food such that any effects of u s farm policies on u s obesity patterns must have been negligible moreover while many arguments can be made for changing u s farm subsidies even entirely eliminating the current programs could not be expected to have a significant influence on obesity rates international evidence reinforces this finding the countries that support their farmers most strongly tend to have relatively low obesity rates in these countries the main support for farmers comes through trade barriers and higher consumer prices which like u s policies for sugar dairy orange juice and beef discourage consumption and reduce obesity in contrast with agricultural subsidies agricultural r d has had a significant effect in the past on the relative price of food commodities and food and has the potential to influence obesity patterns in the future but r d policy is a very blunt instrument for pursuing public health policy objectives

prices and quality effects in cross sectional demand analysis a conceptual clarification of the sources and meaning of cross sectional price variability is used to motivate a theoretical and econometric framework for the estimation of cross sectional demand functions quality effects are distinguished from supply related price variability to identify cross sectional demand for disaggregated food commodities an empirical application using data from the 1977 78 nationwide food consumption survey indicates that parameter differences resulting from a failure to adjust cross sectional prices for quality effects are likely to be small for relatively homogenous disaggregated food commodities in demand analysis with cross sectional household budget data it is usually assumed that prices are constant allen and bowley prais and houthakker george and king given this assumption engel functions are estimated where expenditure or quantity is regressed on income or total expenditures family size and other demographic characteristics the assumption that cross sectional price effects are absent or are captured adequately by spatial and temporal dummy variables has not been evaluated empirically whether cross sectional price effects can be treated in this manner has implications for the specification of cross sectional demand functions as well as the estimation of engel functions there is a considerable literature on estimating price elasticities with cross sectional data most of the applications utilize timeseries cross sectional data annual or quarterly household consumption surveys and

quality quantity and spatial variation of price this paper develops and implements a method for estimating price elasticities of demand using cross sectional household survey data geographically clustered households report unit values which when corrected for quality effects and for measurement error indicate the underlying spatial variation in prices and can be matched to variation in demand patterns a simple model of quality choice is proposed while the correction for measurement error exploits the clustered design of such surveys data from a 1979 household survey from the ivory coast are used to estimate price elasticities for beef meat fish cereals and starches copyright 1988 by american economic association

environmental impacts of changes to healthier diets in europe food consumption causes together with mobility shelter and the use of electrical products most life cycle impacts of consumption meat and dairy are among the highest contributors to environmental impacts from food consumption a healthier diet might have less environmental impacts using the e3iot environmentally extended input output database developed in an eu study on environmental impacts of products eipro this paper estimates the difference in impacts between the european status quo and three simulated diet baskets i e a pattern according to universal dietary recommendations the same pattern with reduced meat consumption and a mediterranean pattern with reduced meat consumption production technologies protein and energy intake were kept constant though this implies just moderate dietary shifts impact reductions of up to 8 were possible in reduced meat scenarios the slightly changed food costs do not lead to significant first order rebound effects second order rebounds were estimated by applying the capri partial equilibrium model this analysis showed that european meat production sector will most likely respond by higher exports to compensate for losses on the domestic meat market higher impact reductions probably would need more drastic diet changes 2011 elsevier b v

has democratization reduced infant mortality in sub saharan africa evidence from micro data does democracy help babies survive in sub saharan africa by using retrospective fertility surveys conducted in 28 african countries i compare the survival of infants born to the same mother before and after democratization to disentangle the effect of democracy from that of changes in population characteristics which is infeasible with country level statistics on infant mortality i find that infant mortality falls by 1 2 percentage points 12 of the sample mean after democratization in the post cold war period relevant aspects of democracy appear to be the combination of multiparty elections and leadership change

is local food more environmentally friendly the ghg emissions impacts of consuming imported versus domestically produced food with the increased interest in the carbon footprint of global economic activities civil society governments and the private sector are calling into question the wisdom of transporting food products across continents instead of consuming locally produced food while the proposition that local consumption will reduce one s carbon footprint may seem obvious at first glance this conclusion is not at all clear when one considers that the economic emissions intensity of food production varies widely across regions in this paper we concentrate on the tradeoff between production and transport emissions reductions by testing the following hypothesis substitution of domestic for imported food will reduce the direct and indirect greenhouse gas ghg emissions associated with consumption we focus on ruminant livestock since it has the highest emissions intensity across food sectors but we also consider other food products as well and alternately perturb the mix of domestic and imported food products by a marginal equal amount we then compare the emissions associated with each of these consumption changes in order to compute a marginal emissions intensity of local food consumption by country and product the variations in regional ruminant emissions intensities have profound implications for the food miles debate while shifting consumption patterns in wealthy countries from imported to domestic livestock products reduces ghg emissions associated with international trade and transport activity we find that these transport emissions reductions are swamped by changes in global emissions due to differences in ghg emissions intensities of production therefore diverting consumption to local goods only reduces global emissions when undertaken in regions with relatively low emissions intensities for non ruminant products the story is more nuanced transport costs are more important in the case of dairy products and vegetable oils overall domestic emissions intensities are the dominant part of the food miles story in about 90 of the country commodity cases examined here

the declining price anomaly abstract data from wine auctions indicate that identical products sold sequentially typically follow a decreasing pattern of prices known as the declining price anomaly this is explained for both first and second price auctions by appealing to risk averse bidders earlier bids are then equal to expected later prices plus a risk premium associated with the risky future price we show that this logic rests on the assumption of nondecreasing absolute risk aversion which is necessary for pure strategy equilibrium bidding functions to exist thus decreasing absolute risk aversion implies ex post inefficiency with positive probability data from wine auctions are used to confirm the existence of the declining price anomaly journal of economic literature classification numbers d43 d44 d81 d82 l81

a decision support framework for evaluating revenue performance in sequential purchase contexts abstract this paper studies the product ordering problem in sequential purchase contexts where sellers aim to maximize their revenue faced with budget constrained buyers we propose a multi layered decision support framework that combines empirical data with simulation optimization and econometric methods to address this problem our framework allows sellers to i compare revenue performances of limited information sequencing strategies ii quantify benchmark revenue levels that can be achieved via the optimal sequence based on detailed buyer information iii determine the costs of limited information and strategic buyers to the seller and iv identify the moderators of sequencing strategy performance we illustrate our framework through two applications in a business to business used car auction setting contrary to previous studies reporting practitioners tendency to sequence items from the lowest value to the highest our results suggest that the best performing limited information sequencing strategy depends on buyers bidding behavior we also find that the revenue difference between the optimal sequence and a limited information sequencing strategy can be substantial our results show that a significant portion of this revenue difference is associated with the seller s limited information on buyers budgets and product valuations our applications also provide various sensitivity analyses and develop new propositions on the moderators of the relationship between the seller s revenue and sequencing strategies

economic and health effects of fruit and vegetable advertising evidence from lab experiments abstract this study investigates consumer response to various types of advertising for fruits and vegetables a food category which health officials uniformly agree is significantly under consumed in the united states using an adult non student subject pool of 271 participants in an economic experiment consumers response to different types of fruit and vegetable advertising is measured empirically this study finds that broad based advertising which is generic advertising for the entire fruit and vegetable category increases consumer willingness to pay by an average of 24 6 the simulation model shows that broad based advertising for fruits and vegetables either alone or as a hybrid with individual commodity specific campaigns e g apple advertising would reduce average caloric intake per person by approximately 1800 kcal per year the results of this study may contribute to new public policy initiatives that aim to reduce diet related illnesses and obesity which have become increasingly prevalent in the united states

the energy efficiency of local food systems a comparison between different modes of distribution abstract the possible contribution of local sales chains to the reduction of energy consumption has been hotly debated in recent years some authors establish a link between the reduction of distances traveled by food and lower energy consumption due to transportation while others hold that local supply chains have a poor energy performance this article engages this debate by comparing the rates of energy consumption attributable to different modes of distribution of fruits and vegetables in a region of france by studying actors actual practices we show that the establishment of local food systems leads to organizational efforts at the local level or in the form of geographically centralized networks which allow energy expenditures linked to distribution to be minimized the studied chains performances are variable from 13 5 to 44 8 goe gram of oil equivalent per euro of product bringing them close to long chains in the best examples comparison with other research underscores the diversity of methods which are put in place they also show that energy performance remains very dependent on where the study was conducted ultimately this study invites us to better analyze the ways in which actors collaborate to optimize energy expenditures relative to the distribution of food products in local sales chains

five a day a price to pay an evaluation of the uk program impact accounting for market forces we provide an ex post assessment of the uk 5 a day information campaign where the positive effects of information are disentangled from potentially conflicting price dynamics using 4 years of data from the expenditure and food survey between 2002 and 2006 we estimate that the 5 a day program has lifted fruit and vegetable consumption by 0 3 portions on average we also provide quantitative evidence of a differentiated impact by income group ranging from 0 2 to 0 7 portions all impacts are larger than those observed by simply comparing pre policy and post policy intakes

ten years of five a day policy in the uk nutritional outcomes and environmental effects abstract this paper estimates the impact of policy measures aimed at increasing fruit and vegetable f v consumption in the uk over more than a decade evaluating changes in purchased quantities and estimating the corresponding greenhouse gas emissions ghges we use a counterfactual scenario analysis to isolate the effects of the policy from the influences of evolving prices incomes and socio demographic factors our estimates suggest that the positive effects of the promotion campaigns on f v purchases about half a portion per adult equivalent per day still persist 10 years after the start of the policy implementation and we find no evidence of a wearout effect we also provide suggestive evidence that the dietary adjustment which accompanies the increase in f v intakes translates into a relevant reduction in ghges by an average amount of 3 3kg of co2e per adult equivalent per month

equilibrium reserve prices in sequential ascending auctions abstract we study a model where bidders have perfectly correlated valuations for two goods sold sequentially in two ascending price auctions the seller sets a reserve price before the beginning of each auction despite the lack of commitment by the seller we characterize an equilibrium and study its properties strategic non disclosure of information takes the form of non participation in the early auction by low valuation bidders while high valuation bidders bid up to their true valuations some buyers who would profitably buy at the reserve price refrain from participating in order to decrease the second auction reserve price

how auctions work for wine and art interview auctioneers and even to buy a little wine in the meantime i have also had the opportunity with john abowd 1988 to observe and collect data on the auction sale of impressionist and contemporary paintings this paper reports on some of the empirical regularities that i and others have observed in the actual operation of the auction markets for these items in view of the rich and diverse array of theoretical literature on auctions it seems high time economists began to spell out precisely what facts it is meant to explain 2

retailers and consumers in sequential auctions of collectibles we analyse an independent private value model where heterogeneous bidders compete for objects sold in sequential second price auctions in this heterogeneous game bidders may have differently distributed valuations and some have multi unit demand with decreasing marginal values retailers others have a specific single unit demand consumers by examining equilibrium bidding strategies and price sequences we show that the presence of consumers leads to more aggressive bidding from the retailers on average and heterogeneous bidders is a plausible explanation of the price decline effect the study of the expected revenue of the seller confirms the interest of auctioneers in inviting different types of bidders nous analysons un modele a valeurs privees independantes dans lequel des encherisseurs heterogenes sont en concurrence pour des objets vendus lors d encheres sequentielles au second prix dans ce jeu heterogene les encherisseurs tirent leurs evaluations de distributions qui peuvent differer et certains les revendeurs ont des demandes multi unitaires avec des evaluations marginales decroissantes alors que les autres les consommateurs ont une demande individuelle specifique l examen des strategies d equilibre et des sequences de prix montrent que la presence de consommateurs conduit en moyenne a des encheres plus agressives de la part des revendeurs et que la presence d encherisseurs heterogenes constitue une explication plausible a la decroissance des prix l etude de l esperance du revenu du vendeur confirme l interet des commissaires priseurs a inviter differentes categories d acheteurs

the impact of tax reforms designed to encourage healthier grain consumption in this paper we simulate the effects of tax reforms aimed at encouraging healthier grain consumption we use a rich data set on household grain consumption in 2003 from the market research institute gfk sweden combined with information on the nutritional content of the consumption we estimate behavioral parameters which are used to simulate the impact on the average household of tax reforms entailing either a subsidy on commodities particularly rich in fiber or a subsidy of the fiber density in grain products our results suggest that to direct the fiber intake towards nutritional recommendations reforms with a substantial impact on consumer prices are required regardless of the type of subsidy implemented the increase in the intake of fiber is accompanied by unwanted increases in nutrients that are often overconsumed fat salt and sugar funding the subsidies by taxing these nutrients or less healthy commodities helps to counteract such developments

why do parties use primaries political selection versus candidate incentives this paper contrasts empirically two possible explanations for the party decision to use primaries desire to improve political selection selection effect or desire to increase political competition and incentives among candidates incentive effect using a simple model of endogenous primaries i show that each explanation implies a different relation between primary adoption and the strength of partisan support i estimate this relation using the case of latin american presidential primaries and find robust evidence that the incentive effect dominates the selection effect

effect of eating seasonal on the carbon footprint of swedish vegetable consumption abstract the advice on climate smart food consumption given by authorities and ngos includes the recommendation to eat seasonal foods however no clear definition of seasonality is given in the literature this study investigated how the carbon footprint of yearly per capita consumption of tomatoes and carrots in sweden was affected by seasonal consumption according to interpretations of seasonality found in communications from swedish ngos and authorities the results showed that the carbon footprint of carrot and tomato consumption was strongly affected by consuming according to either a strict definition of seasonality which excluded both production in heated greenhouses and long distance transport or a definition which only allowed swedish produce the reduction potential was approximately 60 but the consumption pattern was also highly restrictive with e g tomatoes only being consumed during three months according to the strictest definition the reduction from eating only swedish products was not due primarily to characteristics commonly associated with seasonal production shorter transport or low energy demand in cultivation but to the use of renewable fuel instead of fossil energy the methodology chosen in this study resulted in carrots having a more distinct season than tomatoes since the energy use for heating greenhouses which are needed all year round in cold climates was evenly allocated across all tomatoes harvested during one year while the carbon footprint of carrots was assumed to increase with time due to increased energy demand for storage and storage losses hence modern production techniques challenge the traditional concepts of seasonality on an absolute scale including the whole food sector the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from eating seasonal is limited as emissions from vegetable production make up a minor proportion of the total emissions from food consumption

absentee bidders and the declining price anomaly in wine auctions the anomaly is concerned with the observation that in multiple item auctions of identical objects prices tend to decline over time i show that in the case of wine auctions which have been analyzed frequently the anomaly is likely to be caused by the fact that most bids are entered by absentees who use nonoptimal bidding strategies therefore wine auctions can hardly be used to illustrate the standard multiple object auction model

fruit and vegetable consumption patterns a segmentation approach in this article we study the heterogeneity of fruit and vegetable consumption patterns in france a finite mixture of aids models is used to describe food demand patterns revealing different preferences over distinct classes we obtained six different clusters which reflect specific socio demographic characteristics and different income and price elasticities this approach is appropriate for targeting specific public nutritional policies our main results show that unlike the other clusters in which the usual price and income policy tools may be used the lowest income cluster with the lowest consumption remains insensitive to economic variables

political competition policy and growth theory and evidence from the us this paper develops a simple model to analyse how a lack of political competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth we test the predictions of the model on panel data for the us states in these data we find robust evidence that lack of political competition in a state is associated with anti growth policies higher taxes lower capital spending and a reduced likelihood of using right to work laws we also document a strong link between low political competition and low income growth

economic energy and greenhouse emissions impacts of some consumer choice technology and government outlay options abstract the impacts of selected spending options in the australian economy are determined in terms of energy consumption greenhouse gas emissions and a range of economic parameters six case studies of one current practice and one alternative environmentally motivated spending option are carried out describing consumer choices technologies and government outlays the assessment method is based on input output theory and as such enables both the direct and indirect effects of spending to be quantified in general the results indicate that pro environmental objectives such as reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are compatible with broad socio economic benefits such as increases in employment and income and reductions in imports

reflections on the socio economic correlates of health income education occupation age sex marital status and ethnicity are all correlated with health in one context or another this paper reflects on the difficulties encountered in deriving robust scientific conclusions from these correlations or drawing reliable policy applications interactions among the variables nonlinearities casual inference and possible mechanisms of action are discussed strategies for future work are suggested and researchers are urged to pay special attention to possible interactions among health genes and socio economic variables

electoral rules and corruption is corruption systematically related to electoral rules recent theoretical work suggests a positive answer but little is known about the data we try to address this lacuna by relating corruption to different features of the electoral system in a sample of about eighty democracies in the 1990s we exploit the cross country variation in the data as well as the time variation arising from recent episodes of electoral reform the evidence is consistent with the theoretical priors larger voting districts and thus lower barriers to entry are associated with less corruption whereas larger shares of candidates elected from party lists and thus less individual accountability are associated with more corruption individual accountability appears to be most strongly tied to personal ballots in plurality rule elections even though open party lists also seem to have some effect because different aspects roughly offset each other a switch from strictly proportional to strictly majoritarian elections only has a small negative effect on corruption jel e62 h3

democratisation and growth this article challenges cross sectional findings that democracy has a negligible effect on growth we employ a new dataset of political transitions during the third wave of democratisation and examine the within effect of democratisation in countries that abandoned autocracy and consolidated representative institutions the panel estimates imply that on average democratisations are associated with a 1 increase in annual per capita growth the dynamic analysis reveals that while during the transition growth is slow in the medium and long run it stabilises at a higher level this evidence favours development theories of democratic rule and friedrich hayek 1960 s idea that the merits of democracy appear in the long run leading politicians and commentators have argued that democratisation will bring prosperity and growth into pariah and economically poorly performing countries 1 others however remain sceptical pointing to the mixed and inconclusive empirical evidence the old debate dating back to plato and aristotle on which political regime is socially and economically optimal arises again this debate is not purely academic and philosophical as it has important policy implications in the last thirty years the world has experienced an unprecedented move towards democratic institutions influential policy makers and scholars urge western authorities to foster democratic movements in totalitarian countries see the economist article philosophers and kings june 19th 2003 yet the question remains will democratisation bring economic growth to assess the average growth effect of a successful democratic transition we analyse the evolution of annual real per capita gdp growth before and after incidents of permanent democratic reform in the 1960 2003 period in our analysis we exploit a newly constructed dataset of permanent democratisations during the so called third wave of democratisation and the 1990s when many former socialist countries moved towards representative rule the panel results reveal new evidence that contrast with the previous mainly cross sectional work first conditioning on time invariant country characteristics and global shocks a permanent democratisation is associated with approximately a one half to one per cent increment in annual real per capita gdp growth second a dynamic j shaped effect emerges with considerable though not this article is a major revision of an earlier paper titled aristotle was right stable democracy fosters

the effects of a fat tax on french households purchases a nutritional approach this article assesses the effects of a fat tax on the nutrients purchased by french households across different income groups this is done by making a preliminary estimation of price elasticities using a complete demand system on household scanner data and by calculating nutrient elasticities using estimated price elasticities we find that a fat tax has small and ambiguous effects on nutrients purchased by french households and a slight effect on body weight in the short run with a greater effect in the long run such a tax generates substantial tax revenue but is highly regressive

economic assessment of nutritional recommendations abstract the effect of consumers compliance with nutritional recommendations is uncertain because of potentially complex substitutions to lift this uncertainty we adapt a model of consumer behaviour under rationing to the case of linear nutritional constraints dietary adjustments are derived from information on consumer preferences consumption levels and nutritional contents of foods a calibration exercise simulates for different income groups how the french diet would respond to various nutrition recommendations and those behavioural adjustments are translated into health outcomes through the dietron epidemiological model this allows for the ex ante comparison of the efficiency equity and health effects of ten nutritional recommendations although most recommendations impose significant taste costs on consumers they are highly cost effective with the recommendations targeting salt saturated fat and fruits and vegetables f v ranking highest in terms of efficiency most recommendations are also economically progressive with the exception of that targeting f v

estimating the shadow prices of so2 and nox for u s coal power plants a convex nonparametric least squares approach abstract weak disposability between outputs and pollutants defined as a simultaneous proportional reduction of both outputs and pollutants assumes that pollutants are byproducts of the output generation process and that a firm can freely dispose of both by scaling down production levels leaving some inputs idle based on the production axioms of monotonicity convexity and weak disposability we formulate a convex nonparametric least squares cnls quadratic optimization problem to estimate a frontier production function assuming either a deterministic disturbance term consisting only of inefficiency or a composite disturbance term composed of both inefficiency and noise the suggested methodology extends the stochastic semi nonparametric envelopment of data stoned described in kuosmanen and kortelainen 2011 applying the method to estimate the shadow prices of so 2 and no x generated by u s coal power plants we conclude that the weak disposability stoned method provides more consistent estimates of market prices

getting a healthy start the effectiveness of targeted benefits for improving dietary choices there is growing policy interest in encouraging better dietary choices we study a nationallyimplemented policy the uk healthy start scheme that introduced vouchers for fruit vegetables and milk we show thatthe policy has increased spending on fruit and vegetables and has been more effective than an equivalent value cash benefit we also show that the policy improved the nutrient composition of households shopping baskets with no offsetting changes in spending on other foodstuffs

energy requirements of household consumption a case study of the netherlands this article describes the results of several research programmes that together aim at the development and application of methodologies that enable the study of long term environmental effects mainly related to the total household energy demand of household consumption in relation to other economic sectors this is usually described as the household metabolism approach in this article we use energy consumption and co2 emissions as proxies for long term impacts on the environment the major long term environmental effects of several hundred dutch household consumption categories have been determined by means of the hybrid energy analysis methodology total energy consumption and related co2 emission data have been calculated as a function of household income and family type past trends have been studied by a time series 1950 1990 analysis technical reduction potentials have been calculated for mid and long term scenarios it is concluded that the set of methodologies described form a useful tool for the analysis of unsustainable trends in household consumption patterns and associated energy requirements in the past and the present the results indicate that present trends lead towards unsustainability however reversal of these trends is feasible if this starts in the immediate future and if it is maintained for decades c 1999 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the impact of greenhouse gas emissions in the eu food chain a quantitative and economic assessment using an environmentally extended input output approach in order to provide a valuable knowledge basis for future global warming mitigation strategies and policy implementation this study carries out an integrated assessment of greenhouse gas ghg emissions throughout the eu 25 food supply chain considering the highest available level of product disaggregation based on an environmentally extended input output ee io approach we estimate the environmental impacts resulting from the food and non alcoholic beverages supply chain from production to waste management by 44 food products grouped in 11 categories further we perform a structural path analysis to identify the hotspots along the supply chain with the highest emissions finally we carry out an assessment of the economic impact of ghg emissions on each product category considering both the related environmental pressure intensity and the cost of environmental damage social cost the results offer new insights on the amount composition and origin of ghg emissions in the food supply chain more precisely detailed evidence is provided in support of the findings of previous studies that have shown that the contribution of farm level activities on overall ghg emissions is mostly related to n2o and ch4 emissions moreover we highlight the large environmental impact associated with co2 emissions even if they are scattered among a very high number of activities with a limited contribution each hence we infer that multiple hotspots for co2 exist along the whole supply chain and that many of them occur in downstream stages e g transportation processing packaging waste disposal as well as in the cold chain activities as for the economic assessment of emissions the highest costs are attributed to the highest emitting product categories but the share of social costs of these emissions as compared to the overall production value affect each product differently hence the impact of a hypothetical price control measure introduced to internalize the social cost of emissions would vary significantly from one product category to another overall our findings suggest that in order to achieve effective and efficient ghg mitigation in the food system an integrated approach is required including both concrete technological and managerial measures at various stages of the food supply chain and for specific product categories as well as appropriate economic incentive based mechanisms accounting for the social cost of damage e g a carbon tax that can prompt polluters to reduce their emissions along the whole supply chain

why are gender quota laws adopted by men the role of inter and intraparty competition in nearly every case of quota law adoption the support of party elites is critical but this raises a puzzle what can motivate predominantly male elites to put these policies in place this artic

using systems based life cycle assessment to investigate the environmental and economic impacts and benefits of the livestock sector in the uk the livestock industry is a significant component of the agricultural and rural sectors in the uk grassland for livestock accounts for almost half of the terrestrial surface of the uk and almost two thirds of its managed agricultural land it therefore accounts for a major proportion of rural employment and income and provides many landscape and biodiversity benefits taking an ecosystems services framework approach an integrated livestock ecosystems linear programming model was developed to assess economic and environmental impacts of the livestock sector this combined life cycle assessment systems analysis with economic and valuation data and enabled plausible future scenarios to be assessed in terms of provisioning regulating and cultural services analysis showed the main benefit coming from provisioning services and also the significant role the sector plays in providing cultural services and the trade offs between these and the cost of regulating services with respect to emissions to air and water

getting consumers to eat more whole grains the role of policy information and food manufacturers the 2005 dietary guidelines were unique because they offered quantitative recommendations for consumption of whole grains this case study examines the hypothesis that the changed recommendations were responsible for the recent increase in retail sales and consumption of whole grain food products we find that release of the dietary guidelines and related media attention did increase availability and sales of whole grain foods a large impact on consumption occurred through reformulation of existing products induced by competition among food suppliers this study reveals the key role product reformulation plays in inter firm competition and in realization of dietary changes recommended by public

a cost benefit analysis of the eu 20 20 2020 package the european commission did not publish a cost benefit analysis for its 2020 climate package this paper fills that gap comparing the marginal costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emission reduction the uncertainty about the marginal costs of climate change is large and skewed and estimates partly reflect ethical choices e g the discount rate the 2010 carbon price in the eu emissions trading system can readily be justified by a cost benefit analysis emission reduction is not expensive provided that policy is well designed a condition not met by planned eu policy it is probably twice as expensive as needed costing one in ten years of economic growth the eu targets for 2020 are unlikely to meet the benefit cost test for a standard discount rate 3 pure rate of time preference the benefit cost ratio is rather poor 1 30 so that benefits need to be very much higher or costs very much lower than typically assumed to justify the 2020 targets only a very low discount rate 0 prtp would justify the 20 emission reduction target for 2020

does food safety information impact u s meat demand a theoretical model of consumer response to publicized food safety information on meat demand is developed with an empirical application to u s meat consumption evidence is found for the existence of pre committed levels of consumption seasonal factors time trends and contemporaneous own and cross commodity food safety concerns the average demand response to food safety concerns is small especially in comparison to price effects and to previous estimates of health related issues this small average effect masks periods of significantly larger responses corresponding with prominent food safety events but these larger impacts are short lived with no apparent food safety lagged effects on food safety concerns in the united states have dramatically increased in the past decade with regard to incidences of contaminated meat products concerns have arisen because contaminated meat products can result in serious risk to the well being and health of consumers contamination comes from a myriad of sources including but not limited to outbreaks of listeria monocytogenes escherichia coli e coli and salmonella centers for disease control and prevention food safety problems are not isolated to the united states as other unsafe contaminates in meats have emerged across the world including highly publicized outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy bse in europe the potential impacts of publicized food safety events on consumer s demand for meat products in the united states include own effects on the demand for the contaminated meat involved as well as cross effects impacting the demand for other meats the objective of this article is to investigate whether publicized food safety concerns surrounding beef pork and poultry chicken and turkey have impacted meat consumption food safety indices are constructed separately for beef pork and poultry

auctions with synergies and asymmetric buyers in this paper we consider sequential auctions with synergies where one player wants two objects and the remaining players want one object each we show that expected prices may not necessarily decrease as predicted by branco econ lett 54 1997 159 indeed we show that expected prices can actually increase c 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

bottom fishing and declining prices in sequential auctions abstract we study standard sequential auctions in which the seller chooses the order of sale and right to choose auctions in which the winner chooses her preferred item from the remaining items empirically prices in sequential auctions tend to decline and sellers often hold right to choose auctions in our setting the right to choose format guarantees declining prices and efficiency in the standard auction a buyer may submit a low bid for the first item bottom fishing despite its being her less preferred item an example shows that the standard auction has declining prices is inefficient and gives lower expected revenue than the right to choose journal of economic literature classification numbers d44 d82

an assessment of the potential consumption impacts of who dietary norms in oecd countries the member countries of the world health organization who have recently endorsed its global strategy on diet physical activity and health the strategy emphasises the need to limit the consumption of saturated fats and trans fatty acids salt and sugars and to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables in order to combat the growing burden of non communicable diseases this paper attempts a broad quantitative assessment of the consumption impacts of these norms in oecd countries using a mathematical programming approach we find that adherence to the who norms would involve a significant decrease in the consumption of vegetable oils 30 dairy products 28 sugar 24 animal fats 30 and meat pig meat 13 5 mutton and goat 14 5 and a significant increase in the human consumption of cereals 31 fruits 25 and vegetables 21

environmental sustainability in agriculture diet matters abstract there is no agreement that diet matters for environmental sustainability in the agriculture sector much current agriculture is unsustainable and worsening the environmental impact of agriculture degrades natural capital e g loss of topsoil waste and pollution of water nutrient loss extinction of species cattle raising is one of the most damaging components of agriculture livestock now eat about half of global grain production there is limited scope for improving food supply and what scope there is will further damage the environment all means to improve nutrition especially for the poor will be needed as population increases one such means is to improve diets of the rich by eating lower down the food chain while most people in the world thrive on mainly grain based diets carnivory is high in oecd and is increasing in ldcs in order to reduce food wastage and to improve health and food availability a food conversion efficiency tax is proposed the least efficient converters pork beef would be highly taxed more efficient converters poultry eggs dairy would be moderately taxed most efficient converters ocean fish would be taxed lowest grain for human food would not be taxed while coarse grains might be modestly subsidized non food agriculture also would be taxed highest on tobacco and on starches destined for alcoholic beverages produced from land suitable for food production

welfare and sustainability effects of dietary recommendations the paper develops a framework combining a model of rational behaviour under dietary constraints an epidemiological model of diet related mortality and a life cycle analysis model of environmental impact which permits the ex ante assessment of dietary recommendations in multiple sustainability dimensions i e taste cost welfare effect deaths avoided reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and acidification it is applied to compare in a french context the relative effects and efficiency of six popular sustainable diet recommendations the results confirm the synergies between the health and environmental dimensions healthy eating recommendations usually have a positive effect on the environment although some exceptions exist most of the sustainable diet recommendations appear highly cost effective but those most commonly promoted on health grounds e g targeting consumption of salt fruits and vegetables and saturated fat rank highest in terms of overall efficiency moreover the valuation of benefits indicates that in most cases health benefits are significantly larger than environmental benefits overall the analysis reveals some under investment in the promotion of sustainable diet recommendations in france the general lack of enthusiasm in policy circles for informational measures promoting behavioural change may reflect unrealistic expectations about the speed and magnitude of dietary change rather than an objective assessment of the efficiency of those measures

a two stage sequential auction with multi unit demands abstract working within the independent private values paradigm i examine a sequence of two second price auctions where individual bidders have diminishing marginal valuations equilibria are characterized for complete and incomplete informational settings when information is complete allocations can be inefficient and price sequences are constant or decreasing however when information is incomplete and symmetric equilibrium behavior produces efficient outcomes and an expectation of increasing prices these divergent findings are reconciled using an argument based on ex ante bidder asymmetry that can also explain the declining price anomaly finally comparisons to other auctions are made in terms efficiency and revenue generation journal of economic literatureclassification number d44

determining the impact of food price and income changes on body weight we develop a theoretical model to identify conditions under which price and income changes are most likely to change weight although it is intuitive that raising the price of high calorie food will decrease consumption of such goods it is not clear that such an outcome will actually reduce weight our empirical analysis demonstrates a case where a tax on food away from home a food intake category blamed for much of the rise in obesity could lead to an increase in body weight a finding which emphasizes the need to employ economic modeling when developing public policy to reduce obesity

dynamics and stability of constitutions coalitions and clubs a central feature of dynamic collective decision making is that the rules that govern the procedures for future decision making and the distribution of political power across players are determined by current decisions for example current constitutional change must take into account how the new constitution may pave the way for further changes in laws and regulations we develop a general framework for the analysis of this class of dynamic problems under relatively natural acyclicity assumptions we provide a complete characterization of dynamically stable states as functions of the initial state and determine conditions for their uniqueness we show how this framework can be applied in political economy coalition formation and the analysis of the dynamics of clubs the explicit characterization we provide highlights two intuitive features of dynamic collective decision making 1 a social arrangement is made stable by the instability of alternative arrangements that are preferred by sufficiently many members of the society 2 efficiency enhancing changes are often resisted because of further social changes that they will engender

parties as political intermediaries this paper argues that parties regulate competition among like minded factions so as to enhance reputation building by and voter trust in the politicians standing for a given cause while intra and interparty competition contributes to keeping politicians on their toes unbridled competition may encourage politicians to challenge good platforms and to wage competition along socially suboptimal dimensions for example by privileging form over content the paper builds a simple model of intraparty competition and studies whether various hierarchical or democratic party institutions constitute an efe cient form of party governance the paper shows that intraparty disagreements when they occur hurt the party s position in the general election but that their possibility enhances party image and that parties must be able to avoid behind the scene allocations of portfolios and spoils in order to be credible last it analyzes the impact of political polarization and interparty competition on the choice of party governance

the constitutional economics of autocratic succession the paper extends and empirically tests gordontullock s public choice theory of the nature of autocracy a simple model of the relationship between constitutional rules governing succession in autocratic regimes and the occurrence of coups against autocrats is sketched the model is applied to a case study of coups against monarchs in denmark in the period ca 935 1849 a clear connection is found between the specific constitutional rules governing succession and the frequency of coups specifically the introduction of automatic hereditary succession inan autocracy provides stability and limits the number of coups conducted by contenders

the declining price anomaly in dutch dutch rose auctions in symmetric independent private value auctions of a single object with risk neutral bidders the english second price auction has strategic simplicity it is optimal for bidders to reveal their valuation of the object and make bids accordingly in that case the auction is won by the person with the highest valuation who pays a price equal to the second highest valuation in a dutch first price auction this simplicity vanishes here winning bidders have to pay their bid to make a profit they shade their bids and bid below their valuation of the object somewhat loosely one may state that an english auction is truth revealing whereas a dutch auction requires strategic behavior the simple structure of the one unit english auction vanishes if two identical objects are auctioned sequentially now in the first round it is optimal for bidders to shade their bids to account for the option value of participating in the subsequent second round robert j weber 1983 bidders with a higher valuation also have a higher option value therefore they shade their bids in the first round by a greater amount than do bidders with a lower valuation as the auction proceeds the number of bidders decreases over the sequence of auctions the number of objects decreases as well the first fact has a negative effect on the competition for an object and the second has a positive effect both effects cancel out and prices follow a martingale as a result all gains to waiting are arbitraged away and the expected prices in both rounds are the same the latter result also holds for sequential auctions of more than two objects and does not depend on whether the auction is english or dutch this neat theoretical result is not supported by empirical research which usually finds price declines orley ashenfelter 1989 found a mild price decrease in sequential auctions of identical units of wine mcafee and daniel vincent 1993 also present empirical evidence on sequential wine auctions they found that on average the second unit of wine was sold at a price 1 4 percent lower than the price of the first unit victor ginsburgh 1998 uses data from wine auctions in which the auctioneer acted as an agent for bidders who were not present at the auction he found price declines but apparently the absent bidders entered bids that did not fit with the theory empirical studies by ashenfelter and david genesove 1992 see also jean jacques laffont 1997 and alan beggs and kathryn graddy 1997 concern heterogeneous objects they also detected price declines because of the contradiction between theory and empirical studies the declining price phenomenon is regarded to be an anomaly

quadratic engel curves and consumer demand this paper presents a model of consumer demand that is consistent with the observed expenditure patterns of individual consumers in a long time series of expenditure surveys and is also able to provide a detailed welfare analysis of shifts in relative prices a nonparametric analysis of consumer expenditure patterns suggests that engel curves require quadratic terms in the logarithm of expenditure while popular models of demand such as the translog or the almost ideal demand systems do allow flexible price responses within a theoretically coherent structure they have expenditure share engel curves that are linear in the logarithm of total expenditure we derive the complete class of integrable quadratic logarithmic expenditure share systems a specification from this class is estimated on a large pooled data set of u k households models that fail to account for engel curvature are found ro generate important distortions in the patterns of welfare losses associated with a tax increase

sequential auctions with synergies an example abstract an equilibrium in an example of a two unit sequential ascending price auction where some bidders have superadditive values is presented the equilibrium is in pure strategies in equilibrium the expected price declines from the first to the second auction

simultaneous auctions with synergies and common values abstract in this paper we study a simultaneous auction model with synergies common values and overlapping interests we construct strategies in which bidders of different types randomize over different bid intervals and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for such strategies to form symmetric equilibria questions about seller s revenue and efficiency are addressed journal of economic literature classification number d44