consumer research with big data applications from the food demand survey foods in three separate studies based on data from the food demand survey foods which has been conducted monthly for over three years this paper explores heterogeneity in preference across consumers in traditional demand systems heterogeneity in preferences over time in choice experiments and the tail of the distribution for a particular food consumption pattern vegetarianism results show that elasticities of demand for food at home and food away from home vary widely across different groups of consumers defined by a priori cluster analysis based on demographic and attitudinal variables results from a choice experiment are found to depend on when the experiment was conducted and on the market prices prevailing at the time of the survey given the large sample of consumers observed over time there is sufficient data to demographically characterize a small portion of the population vegetarians using traditional logit models and a machine learning method a classifications tree

structural change in urban chinese food preferences we undertake a range of tests for structural food preference change in urban china using provincial level panel data from 2002 to 2010 we introduce a time transition function into the generalized quadratic almost ideal demand system gqaids to represent consumer preferences we apply this system to evaluate the demand structure for seven food groups the use of the gqaids specification relaxes many empirical demand system restrictions associated with previous analyses of structural preference change our findings suggest that chinese food preferences are continuing to evolve

measuring rural consumers willingness to pay for quality labels using experimental auctions the case of aflatoxin free maize in kenya aflatoxins are a common health hazard in tropical countries especially in rural areas new methods to reduce aflatoxin levels in food staples as well as cheaper test methods are being developed but consumers willingness to pay wtp for these improvements is unknown a survey was conducted with a representative sample of rural consumers 1 344 in total 63 women in all major maize production zones of kenya the survey included an experimental auction with maize products of different qualities the results showed that many rural consumers were aware of aflatoxins but few understood their health risks respondents were willing to pay a premium for maize tested for aflatoxins and labeled but asked a high discount for maize that was visibly contaminated with moldy grain the premium was higher for respondents with education and in regions with aflatoxicosis outbreaks knowledge of aflatoxins substantially reduced the overall wtp but did not increase the wtp for tested maize welfare analysis indicates that mandatory testing would result in substantial benefits if the cost of testing can be lowered to below the premium

impact of food safety information on us poultry demand the impact of poultry product recall events on consumer demand in the us was empirically tested for four major categories of poultry broiler young chicken eggs turkey and other chicken mature or nonbroiler chicken from 2000 to 2004 poultry food safety inspection service fsis recall events had a consistent positive impact on demand for turkey but no significant impact on other types of poultry products united states department of agriculture usda fsis recall as a complement to food labelling did not undermine poultry consumption but promoted turkey demands on the contrary media recall undermined poultry demands moreover it demonstrated that turkey consumers were a special behaviour group of poultry consumers

public goods as characteristics of non market commodities in benefit cost analysis it is useful to model public goods as the quality of privately consumed nonmarketed goods this strategy is often pursued in valuing environmental amenities the theoretical foundations of this model have not been fully developed in this paper comparative statics results are derived for quality changes of nonmarket goods the results reveal some common misconceptions about welfare measurement of quality changes conditions are presented for a quality induced change in the marshallian consumer surplus of the nonmarket good to approximate the true compensated welfare measure the conditions are equally necessary for obtaining exact welfare measures copyright 1993 by royal economic society

the nested piglog model an application to u s food demand a new demand system is introduced the nested piglog model nesting thirteen other demand systems including five that are also new this new model and its nested special cases are applied to models of u s food demand that include food at home fah food away from home fafh and alcoholic beverages although nested tests and out of sample forecasting performance favor generalizing models to a certain degree statistically insignificant improvements to in sample fit and even poorer out of sample forecast accuracy undermine further generalizations based on a subset of preferred models fafh is found to be price and income elastic compared to fah which is price and income

allies and friends the trade policy review of the united states 2006 the 2006 wto trade policy review of the united states reveals that national security concerns have become a dominant influence on us trade policy since 2001 this paper argues that direct and indirect effects of this influence have been deleterious to the multilateral trading system security concerns have led to an embrace of bilateralism that bears little relation to us commercial interests and will arguably detract from ongoing efforts at multilateral trade liberalisation security concerns have also led to a substantial change in customs and inspection procedures for goods bound for the us which could swamp tariffs in terms of their trade inhibiting effect finally the unpopularity at home of us military actions abroad has weakened the us president and opened the door for rising protectionism in congress

the impact of bse on the demand for beef and other meats in great britain indices of media coverage of bse are incorporated in a dynamic aids model of meat demand the publicity which bse has received is found to have had significant effects on the allocation of consumer expenditure among the meats a short run impact has been identified which accounts in large part for the discernible drop in the market share of beef in the early 1990s and more important there also appears to be a significant long run impact of bse which by the end of 1993 has reduced the beef market share by 4 5

the changing role of consumers and suppliers in a food safety event the 2006 foodborne illness outbreak linked to spinach abstractthis article provides a means for testing whether buyers or sellers are responsible for a drop in sales following a market shock we show that suppliers responses dominated the market reaction to the 2006 us food and drug administration warning to avoid fresh spinach contaminated with potentially deadly bacteria escherichia coli o157 h7 a modified durbin wu hausman test for temporary price endogeneity is developed and used in a leafy green vegetable demand model test results indicate the price of bagged spinach was exogenous before the announcement but endogenous for approximately 12 weeks afterward we show these results are consistent with the notion that suppliers temporarily limited the availability of spinach to consumers instead of consumers choosing the quantity purchased given exogenous prices it was suppliers who limited the quantity marketed and consumers choices established the market price

gaitl a generalised version of the almost ideal and translog demand systems abstract ai and translog are popular models in empirical demand literature in this paper we present a generalised model gaitl which nests both and moreover the lewbel 1989 demand system estimation and statistical testing based on italian household data suggests rejection of both in favour of the gaitl also when demographic effects are considered

food scandals media attention and habit persistence among desensitised meat consumers abstract consumer reactions to food scandals and their resulting economic implication are well documented however studies have typically neglected the roles that consumption habits and media usage behaviours may play in explaining household s response to food safety incidences in this study we develop a model of heterogeneous media usage intensity information impacts and decay over time to estimate household s behavioural responses to the 2011 german dioxin scandal we are specifically interested in determining the degree of heterogeneity in household s short term adjustments demand patterns versus persisting long term consumption habits of meat products chicken and pork directly affected by the incident the empirical analysis employs detailed household level retail scanner and media usage data collected by the gfk consumer scan panel for a total of 16 023 households over a period of 104 calendar weeks results of dynamic correlated random effect tobit models indicate an important role of unobserved heterogeneity in explaining household responses during the food scandal we find strong empirical evidence supporting our hypothesis that short term marginal adjustments in demand and propensity to buy affected products triggered by the negative impact of household media exposure were over compensated by habit persistence the question of how consumption patterns evolve over time in the presence of food scandals is expected to be of interest for both policy makers and the food industry the potential biases in the projection of economic impacts resulting from simplifying assumptions of household s response patterns to a proliferating numbers of food safety incidences has implications for risk management and public policy

consumer preferences before and after a food safety scare an experimental analysis of the 2010 egg recall in august 2010 more than half a billion eggs were recalled in the u s because of a salmonella outbreak this study examines the effect of the recall with a unique pair of auction experiments investigating willingness to pay wtp for conventional and organic eggs one conducted shortly before and one right after the recall with the same participants in addition to the before and after bids participants bid again after a negative information or balanced information treatment about the event accompanying surveys showed consumers had a high level of awareness of the recall but less knowledge of specific details and viewed information on egg farm conditions as very important in their wtp while there were no significant before and after differences wtp for organic eggs significantly increased in the negative information treatment and balanced information had a positive effect on consumer wtp for conventional eggs

the effects of inflation uncertainty on interest rates a nonlinear approach in this article we investigate the effects of inflation variability on short term interest rates within a nonlinear smooth transition regression framework the test results suggest that only the conditional mean of the inflation is a nonlinear process whereas the conditional variance is time variant but linear using the square root of conditional variance as a proxy for inflation risk we estimate fisher equation augmented with inflation risk although the estimated fisher equations suggest that inflation risk reduces short term interest rates we find that the effects of inflation risk on interest rates are regime dependent particularly we find that the negative effects of inflation variability on nominal rates are greater in low inflationary regimes when compared to high inflationary regimes on the other hand it is found that both inflation and inflation uncertainty raise the expected inflation effect

price transmission in the spanish bovine sector the bse effect a regime switching vector error correction model is applied to monthly price data to assess the impact of bovine spongiform encephalopathy bse outbreaks on price relationships and patterns of transmission among farm and retail markets for bovines in spain to evaluate the degree to which price transmission is affected by bse food scares a bse food scare index is developed and used to determine regime switching results suggest that bse scares affect beef producers and retailers differently consumer prices are found to be weakly exogenous and not found to react to bse scares while producer prices are conversely adjusted the magnitude of the adjustment is found to depend on the magnitude of the bse scare

impacts of meat product recalls on consumer demand in the usa the impact of meat product recall events on consumer demand beef pork poultry and other consumption goods in the usa is tested empirically beef pork and poultry recall indices are constructed from both the food safety inspection service s meat recall events and from newspaper reports over the period 1982 1998 following previous product recall studies recall indices are incorporated as shift variables in consumers demand functions estimating an absolute price version of the rotterdam demand model findings indicate that food safety inspection service s meat recall events significantly impact demand and newspaper reports do not moreover although elasticities related to recall events are significant they are small in magnitude relative to price and income effects any favourable effects on the demands of meat substitutes for a recall are offset by a more general negative effect on meat demand the general negative effect indicates a shift out of meat to non meat consumption goods

a structural time series approach to modelling multiple and resurgent meat scares in italy this paper exploits a structural time series approach to model the time pattern of multiple and resurgent food scares and their direct and cross product impacts on consumer response a structural time series almost ideal demand system sts aids is embedded in a vector error correction framework to allow for dynamic effects vec sts aids italian aggregate household data on meat demand is used to assess the time varying impact of a resurgent bse crisis 1996 and 2000 and the 1999 dioxin crisis the vec sts aids model monitors the short run impacts and performs satisfactorily in terms of residuals diagnostics overcoming the major problems encountered by the customary vector error correction approach

macroeconomic adjustment and human nutrition abstract the macroeconomic adjustments made by most developing countries over the past decade to cope with economic crises have in many cases had severe effects on the poor these effects have often been ignored in planning but it is important to address them both to avoid human suffering and to facilitate economic growth this article provides a brief synthesis of current knowledge about the short term effects of macroeconomic adjustment policies on the nutritional status of the poor and proposes action to improve the nutrition effects of future adjustment programmes

measuring welfare effects of product contamination with consumer uncertainty abstract a methodology is developed for measuring consumer welfare loss from market demand due to contamination when information is imperfect comparison of behavior before and after awareness permits calculation of the cost of ignorance which occurs when news of contamination is withheld or undiscovered for a time as well as when excessive reporting and exaggeration cause overreaction avoidance costs are also calculated for consumers who consume less than they would with perfect information due to risk aversion the methodology is applied to analyzing the heptachlor crisis which reduced milk consumption in hawaii by over 80

effects and value of verifiable information in a controversial market evidence from lab auctions of genetically modified food food products containing genetically modified gm ingredients have entered the market over the past decade the biotech industry and environmental groups have disseminated conflicting private information about gm foods this paper develops a unique methodology for valuing independent third party information in such a setting and applies this method to consumers willingness to pay for food products that might be gm data are collected from real consumers in an auction market setting with randomized information and labeling treatments the average value of third party information per lab participant is small but the public good value across u s consumers is shown to be quite large jel c91 d12 d82

maintaining and testing separability in demand systems we derive a general elasticity representation of the necessary and sufficient conditions for direct weak separability of the utility function parametric restrictions required to implement the separability conditions are presented for three common demand systems the almost ideal translog and rotterdam our empirical application uses the rotterdam model to test a few separable structures within a complete u s demand system emphasizing food commodities results based on size corrected likelihood ratio tests provide support for commonly used separability assumptions about food and meat demand

an indicator of future inflation extracted from the steepness of the interest rate yield curve along its entire length the term structure slope contains information about expected future inflation mishkin shows that the spread between the twelve month and three month interest rates helps predict the difference between twelve month and three month inflation we apply a simple existing framework which lets the real interest rate vary in the short run but converge to a constant in the long run to this problem the appropriate indicator of expected inflation uses the entire length of the yield curve estimating the steepness of a specific nonlinear transformation rather than being restricted to a spread between two points the resulting indicator better predicts inflation over 1960 1991

pathways into and out of poverty a study of rural household wealth dynamics in kenya this study identifies the factors associated with smallholder farm households that have risen out of poverty or descended into poverty between 1997 and 2007 in kenya the study uses data from a nationwide balanced panel of 1 275 households and data from detailed retrospective life history survey of 84 households that had experienced either an appreciable improvement or decline in their asset wealth over the 10 year panel period the results indicate that household welfare dynamics are associated with a disparate set of idiosyncratic and unexpected shocks such as death and chronic illness demographic factors proximity to infrastructural facilities as well as intergenerational wealth transfers

no news is good news stochastic parameters versus media coverage indices in demand models after food scares we develop a stochastic parameter approach to model the time varying impacts of food scares on consumption as an alternative to the inclusion of news coverage indices in the demand function we empirically test the methodology on data from four food scares the 1982 heptachlor milk contamination in oahu hawaii and the bovine spongiform encephalopathy and two escherichia coli scares on u s meat demand over the period 1993 9 results show that the inclusion of time varying parameters in demand models enables the capturing of the impact of food safety information and provides better short term forecasts

cash crop production food price volatility and rural market integration in the third world large farmers in the third world often devote to cash crops a larger share of their land than do small farmers this paper suggests a possible explanation even in the presence of food markets third world farmers food security is best assured by food self sufficiency a model of crop portfolio choice under multivariate risk is used to show that reasonable assumptions regarding risk and preferences reproduce the observed pattern simulations further indicate that food market integration reduces the need for food self sufficiency policy implications are drawn regarding domestic trade liberalization and agricultural technology

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

disaggregated household meat demand with censored data previous research on meat demand has generally used highly aggregated data across time products and consumers however meat products across species are likely stronger substitutes than some products from the same species further demand for specific meat products would be expected to respond differently to market information about food safety or other events this study uses monthly consumer panel data collected between 1992 and 2000 to estimate a disaggregated meat product demand system the use of the expectations maximization algorithm is introduced to estimate a demand system that adjusts for the econometric problem of censored data resulting from purchased shares of some products by individuals often being equal to zero results indicate that certain individual meat products have noticeably different own price elasticities than existing aggregate meat product estimates of their respective species some individual meat products have stronger substitutes across species than within species e g be

food marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa a survey abstract this article surveys the empirical record of grain marketing and pricing policy in eastern and southern africa over 1930 1995 the paper addresses five key issues with major implications for food policy throughout africa a why the anticipated supply response to market liberalization has not yet occurred b why the common assumption of state taxation of farmers to support a cheap food policy does not apply in most of the countries in the region c why the temporary successes of the state led approach to stimulating smallholder grain production were unsustainable d why the elimination of government food subsidies associated with market reform has not adversely affected consumers and e why the fiscal cost of the marketing systems at least initially worsened rather than improved after the reforms were implemented in most countries the key future challenges for marketing policy are how to develop coordinated and financially sustainable input finance and commodity marketing systems for raising productivity growth in smallholder agriculture while overcoming inherited agricultural dualism and how to mitigate the effects of food price instability in a cost effective manner

consumer response to maize market liberalization in urban kenya abstract the elimination of consumer food subsidies associated with structural adjustment in africa has been widely thought to exacerbate food insecurity for low income consumers this article determines how urban maize consumption and expenditure patterns have responded to the liberalization of the maize and maize meal markets in kenya the article decomposes changes in maize meal prices attributable to changes in maize grain prices and maize milling margins results are obtained through two random household surveys in nairobi the first having been conducted before and the second after liberalization the main finding of the study is that maize market liberalization has conferred substantial benefits to urban consumers the combined saving to nairobi consumers from lower maize milling costs has been roughly us 10 1 million each year about the same amount that the government of kenya allocates annually to agricultural research results also indicate that the former consumer subsidies conferred through the official marketing channel were untargeted and actually inversely related to household income the subsidies on sifted meal also served to entrench a non competitive market structure that inhibited the development of a lower cost informal milling system these findings are consistent with research results from other eastern and southern african countries showing that the negative effects of eliminating food subsidies in the state marketing system have been largely compensated by relaxing controls on private grain trade which has increased consumers access to less expensive grain products distributed through informal markets

can china s meat imports be sustainable a case study of mad cow disease rising demand and constrained domestic production have challenged the meat consumption in china to fill the gap between domestic demand and supply china imports an increasing volume of meat produ

putting the 2007 2008 global food crisis in longer term perspective trends in staple food affordability in urban zambia and kenya abstract staple food prices in cities in eastern and southern africa rose sharply between late 2007 and early 2009 leading to estimates of massive increases in food insecurity and hunger however in assessing the impacts of soaring food prices on urban consumers access to food it is important to consider food price changes relative to changes in per capita incomes in this study we use the case studies of zambia and kenya where data are available on food prices wage rates incomes and other indicators of urban purchasing power to answer two main questions i how did staple food purchasing power at the height of the food price crisis compare to levels over the last 15 years and ii did the food price crisis exacerbate an already declining trend in staple food purchasing power or did it reverse a trend of stable or improving staple food affordability results indicate that staple food purchasing power in urban zambia and kenya improved markedly in the 10 12 years prior to the food price crisis most measures of bread and maize meal affordability at the start of the crisis in 2007 were at levels 1 0 4 3 times higher than in the mid 1990s these gains for urban consumers were slashed but not completely reversed during the food crisis between 2007 and 2009 maize meal and bread were still more affordable in urban zambia than all periods between 1994 and 2003 in urban kenya staple food purchasing power as of 2008 2009 was comparable to levels in 2000 2001 2004 2005 according to some indicators while other measures suggest that the food price crisis reduced staple food purchasing power to levels lower than any other year in the period 1994 1995 2007 2008

choice of technology in small and large firms grain milling in tanzania abstract it is not uncommon to find many production units in low income labor abundant and capital scarce economies such as tanzania employing sophisticated and capital intensive production techniques in such circumstances a technology choice problem exists in the sense that the technologies in use and more often the products being produced are not compatible with the resource endowment of the economy and the income levels of the majority of the population this paper evaluates the relative performance of small and large scale grain milling techniques in tanzania to identify appropriate ones and explain why some firms select inappropriate techniques and products the consequences of technology choice are then discussed within the context of employment creation output expansion surplus generation skill formation economies of scale and overall resource use

demand for beef and chicken products separability and structural change several studies have indicated that the recent shift from beef to poultry in consumption is not entirely caused by changes in rela tive prices or income braschler chavas dahlgran hudson and vertin moschini and meilke frank thurman most studies of structural change have focused on red meat consumption only thurman has looked closely at the poultry market and no one has considered poultry products yet the mix of chicken products marketed changed dramat ically during the last twenty years and should have influenced aggregate meat demand the share of broiler slaughter marketed as whole birds declined from 74 in 1965 to 28 in 1985 while cut up parts and processed chick en products increased from 26 to 72 whole birds are inferior goods and cut up parts and processed chicken are normal goods haidacher et al the shift in chicken prod uct mix away from whole birds should have increased the preference for total chicken in this article two related questions are ad dressed first do consumers allocate expendi tures among meats by animal origin or by product type second does disaggregation of meat into products in a meat demand model give insight into the causes of structural

interlinked markets and the cash crop food crop debate in land abundant tropical agriculture the purpose of this article is to illustrate how such institutions do arise in the african context under certain preconditions it is argued that the lack of a land market due largely to a non capitalist conception of property rights over land 3 along with other conditions to be examined below leads to the failure of labor and private sector credit markets in response indigenous institutions have evolved to cope with the market failures

the effects of price deregulation on maize marketing margins in south africa abstract there has been continuous controversy over the impact of food market reforms on food security in africa in south africa the government and media have often questioned the effects of price deregulation of maize meal the major staple food on consumers this article determines the effect of retail price deregulation on the size of maize milling retail margins in south africa regression models of monthly milling retail margins are run from the period may 1976 to december 2004 to assess the robustness of our findings we estimate several different models of structural change vary the sample period to examine the sensitivity of findings to unusual weather and market conditions in the region during episodes between 2001 and 2004 and run the models using different estimation techniques ols with newey west robust estimators and feasible general least squares in virtually all models the results indicate that real maize milling retailing margins in south africa have increased by at least 20 since the deregulation of retail prices in 1991 moreover there is evidence of trend growth in the size of the milling margin over time simulations indicate that the deregulation of maize meal prices has entailed a transfer of at least us 179 million year from consumers to agents in the marketing system further study is needed to understand why this outcome in south africa differs from findings in other countries in the region concerning the effects of reform on food marketing margins

the role of warehouse receipt systems in enhanced commodity marketing and rural livelihoods in africa most african countries have since the 1980s liberalised agriculture without experiencing food crisis as feared by sceptics but the outcome of reforms has been rather disappointing and agricultural markets remain underdeveloped and inefficient one means to improve agricultural marketing which is the focus of this paper is to develop regulated warehouse receipt wr systems the system will curtail cheating on weights and measures ease access to finance at all levels in the marketing chain moderate seasonal price variability and promote instruments to mitigate price risks it will also reduce the need for the government to intervene in agricultural markets and reduce the cost of such interventions if needed the major problem in establishing wr systems in africa is disabling elements in the policy environment drawing on experience from projects implemented in africa during the last decade 1 the authors outline how this challenge can be addressed the most crucial being to build strong stakeholder support behind the initiative 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

food scare crises and price volatility the case of the bse in spain abstract recent incidents of contaminated food products coupled with the widespread diffusion of news by mass media and the growing social concerns about food safety have resulted in significant food market crises one of the most highly publicized recent food scares involved bovine spongiform encephalopathy bse in our analysis we evaluate the impacts from a bse outbreak on the price volatility transmission along the spanish food marketing chain by using a smooth transition conditional correlation stcc garch model our work is the first to assess price volatility responses to food scares results suggest that two distinct regimes involving different price volatility behavior can be distinguished one characterized by turbulent markets and another where markets are calming down

demographic variables in demand analysis in this paper the authors discuss five procedures for incorporating demographic variables into theoretically plausible demand systems translating scaling and the gorman reverse gorman and implicit prais houthakker procedures these five procedures are used to incorporate a single demographic variable the number of children in a household into the generalized ces demand system using household budget data for the united kingdom for the period 1966 1972 excerpt

kenya s cereal sector reform programme managing the politics of reform abstract the political aspects of reform have been underplayed in structural adjustment programmes the problematic and inconsistent implementation of kenya s cereal sector reform programme csrp it is argued here is substantially the result of failing to manage the politics of reform good political management of the reform process would have included ensuring a clear understanding by interest groups of the likely consequences of liberalisation and full involvement of the president and cabinet from the outset in order to create an ongoing reform culture

random profits and duality dual production specifications derived under certainty are typically randomized for econometric purposes with ad hoc error specifications this article shows that such approaches can cause integrability conditionsto fail in particular if errorsin input demands represent errorsin optimization that affect output then typical dual approachesdo not yield congruent suppliesand demands copyright 2002 oxford university press

modeling the pattern of structural change in u s meat demand the hypothesis of structural change in u s meat demand is tested in a four meat almost ideal demand system with parameters following a gradual switching regression model the results support the notion that structural change partly explains the observed u s meat consumption patterns structural change is biased against beef neutral for pork in favor of chicken and fish and it does not affect estimated elasticities the estimated path of structural change implies a rapid transition to a new regime in the mid 1970s although a smooth path cannot be ruled out

sequencing and valuing public goods abstract this paper establishes several propositions concerning the importance of context in valuing public goods it first provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the value of a public good to be independent of context utility constant valuation sequences are considered where public goods are systematically made available or taken away for the case of strict hicksian substitutes willingness to pay for an increase in one of the public goods is strictly decreasing the farther out in a sequence it is valued for the destruction of public goods the reverse is true for willingness to accept compensation sequencing has opposite implications for the assessment of the benefits of providing public goods than for the assessment of the damage from destroying them

comparing consumer preferences for color and nutritional quality in maize application of a semi double bound logistic model on urban consumers in kenya consumer preferences for white maize in east and southern africa concerns developers of maize biofortified with provitamin a carotenoids since carotenoids impart a yellow or orange coloration urban consumers willingness to pay wtp for yellow maize was estimated using a semi double bounded logistic model based on a survey of 600 maize consumers in nairobi kenya at posho mills kiosks and supermarkets consumers showed a strong preference for white maize only a minority would buy yellow maize at the same price as white maize and fewer consumers in the posho mills 24 and kiosks 19 than in the supermarkets 34 would do so on average consumers need a price discount of 37 to accept yellow maize this discount was less at the posho mills 35 and kiosks 37 than in the supermarkets 48 most respondents 76 were aware of the existence of fortified meal and the generally showed an interest the average premium for fortified maize was much less than the discount for yellow 5 9 for those aware and 7 4 for those unaware consumer preferences were influenced by socioeconomic factors such as gender education income and ethnic background women have a stronger preference for both white maize and fortified maize than men and consumers with more education have a stronger preference for white income decreases the wtp for yellow maize as well as the price elasticity but increases the wtp for fortified maize consumers originating from western kenya have a lower preference for white while those from central kenya had a stronger preference for fortified maize

impact of bse and bird flu on consumers meat demand in japan in this article we investigate the impact of bse and bird flu on consumers meat demand in japan by using the almost ideal demand system the bse and bird flu scares brought about a fall in demand for beef and chicken respectively and an upturn in demand for pork and fishery products which are substitutes for beef and chicken in japan we also find that the bird flu outbreak had no impact on the market share for beef this suggests that bse had a larger impact on consumers meat demand than did bird flu our empirical results also show that bse has had a persistent impact whereas bird flu has not these differences might depend on the characteristics of each disease such as the incubation period cure rate and infection risk

the poultry market demand stability and industry structure the stability of the demand for poultry meat and specification issues in its estimation are explored the analysis concludes that the demand for poultry meat shifted out in the early 1970s at the same time the demand relationship between poultry and pork changed from substitution to independence a second conclusion is that poultry price is predetermined for demand in annual u s data while quantity is not a predetermined price suggests several market structures exogeneity tests are performed to distinguish among them the results are consistent with a competitive constant returns to scale industry facing elastic factor supplies

facing up to trump administration mercantilism the 2018 wto trade policy review of the united states as one of the largest trading economies in the wto system us trade policy is reviewed regularly by wto members informed by a trade policy review tpr report this paper discusses the 2018 tpr of the united states the 14th such review undertaken since the entry into force of the wto in 1995 it is the first review of trade policy under the trump administration while the tpr documents the significant changes in us trade policy it does not engage with the mercantilist vision that motivates trade policy under president trump or the apparent desire to engage in trade wars with its major trading partners the lack of discussion of the existential threat to the liberal trading system implied by the drastic changes to us trade policy reduces the salience of the tpr and makes it unclear exactly what purpose it serves

the predictability of fomc decisions evidence from the volcker and greenspan chairmanships this paper examines whether there is a systematic relationship between fomc decisions and publicly available data that would potentially allow the public to anticipate fomc policy changes we characterize each fomc decision as a move to tighten ease or leave policy unchanged and use ordered probit to estimate models of the probabilities of each choice we find a statistically significant relationship between fomc decisions and measures of inflation and real activity but this relationship does not accurately predict the directions of fomc decisions while short term interest rate changes prior to fomc meetings have predictive power suggesting that the financial market can anticipate fomc decisions somewhat other financial variables such as stock price movements appear unrelated to fomc policy changes overall fomc decisions are not highly predictable using publicly available data and adding the private information contained in the fomc s greenbook does not significantly increase the predictive accuracy

a structural model of the analysis of retail market power the case of fluid milk we derive a structural model of firm behavior that is composed of the generalized quadratic almost ideal demand system to represent both consumers milk preferences and firm profit maximization conditions that allow for a range of competitive scenarios the importance of this specification is found in its fuller representation of consumer preferences as opposed to the linear approximate almost ideal demand system used in previous analyses we apply this structural framework to investigate retailer conduct in the sale of beverage milk in a u s market using product level data our lerner index estimates show that retailers are not perfectly competitive however this deviation is small copyright 2012 oxford university press

news and volatility of food prices financial markets exhibit an asymmetric news effect with unexpected low prices generating more price volatility than news of high prices the present study examines us food markets for such asymmetric news effects analysis of 25 years of monthly data for 45 retail food items shows that price news destabilizes about a third of the markets with unexpected price increases more destabilizing

a test of nutritional quality signaling in food markets prior to implementation of mandatory labeling in may 1994 new nutrition labeling regulations went into effect in the united states requiring mandatory disclosure of information on the nutritional content of foods this article uses grossman s model of totally effective quality signaling to evaluate whether markets were effective in information provision prior to the new regulation if markets were effective in providing information to consumers on the nutritional quality of foods the new regulation would be unnecessary the results of the logistic model where the probability of voluntary information disclosure is linked to the nutritional quality of food products and their prices indicate that private quality signaling was not reliably at work in food markets prior to implementation of the mandatory nutrition labeling regulation copyright 2000 oxford university press

the many faces of adjustment the 1980s was a decade of adjustment for much of the third world at an early stage unicef drew attention to the serious human costs of the recession and subsequently to the impact of stabilisation and adjustment measures on vulnerable groups and the need for special policies to counter these costs jolly and cornia 1984 cornia jolly and stewart 1987 in the latter half of the decade there were apparently very major changes in the international financial institutions in these matters in their recognition of the social costs of adjustment and of the need for changes in policies

market incentives for safe foods an examination of shareholder losses from meat and poultry recalls meat and poultry recalls while voluntary are carried out under governmental oversight if firms have financial incentives to avoid being implicated in a recall situation governmental involvement in recalls may cause firms to internalize social costs when making investment decisions concerning food safety controls to examine these incentives we analyze federally supervised meat and poultry recalls from 1982 to 1998 within an event study results show significant shareholder losses when publicly traded food companies are implicated in a recall involving serious food safety hazards we find no evidence that the stock market reacts negatively when recalls involve less severe hazards each year unsafe foods sicken millions and lead to losses in terms of life and productivity mead et al estimate that foodborne pathogens account for 76 million illnesses and 5 000 deaths in the united states given human error and the limitations of food safety technology food items that pose undue risks to the public will be distributed from time to time when this occurs the firms involved stand to incur expenses related to recovering disposing of or reconditioning potentially contaminated products already placed on the market in addition negative publicity can lead to reductions in product demand and may erode prior investments in reputation and brand capital these firms may also face costs from liability claims associated with an outbreak of food related illnesses or injury our main objective in this paper is to examine reductions in food company valuations that result from food contamination incidents we focus specifically on meat and poultry firms that have shipped products that were later recalled for food safety reasons because preventative actions taken by firms can affect the probability of being implicated in a product recall situation the wealth that is lost when companies are required to recall

the economics of nested names name specificity reputations and price premia a good can be identified by its region or country of origin the firm that produces it and its product name in other words names can nest within each other to categorize goods with increasing specificity this article develops a conceptual framework for jointly analyzing the effect of product firm and collective reputations on market price the model is estimated via quantile regression with california wine market data the results portray how the structure and relative importance of reputations change as product prices vary specifically reputation premia migrate from collective to specific names as prices increase

model choice in consumer analysis taiwan 1970 89 expenditure data were used to study how income and prices influenced consumer demand in taiwan during the last decade alternative differential demand models combining the features of the rotterdam model and the almost ideal demand system aids were tested aids type demand responses describe taiwanese consumer behavior better than do the other specifications

estimating consumer willingness to pay for food quality with experimental auctions the case of yellow versus fortified maize meal in kenya biofortification of maize with provitamin a carotenoids is a new approach to the alleviation of vitamin a deficiencies in africa unfortunately these varieties are yellow or orange while consumers generally prefer white consumer willingness to pay for yellow and fortified maize was compared in experimental auctions in three regions in kenya the premium that consumers are willing pay for fortified maize 24 was higher than the discount they require to buy yellow maize 11 and in one zone consumers prefer yellow yellow color is therefore not an impossible obstacle for biofortified maize although it would clearly be easier to introduce this maize first in regions where yellow maize is currently grown

food scares in an uncertain world we develop a model that explains the stylized facts of food scares an immediate and sharp decline in consumption of the product followed by a slow and frequently partial recovery of demand after the scare passes the model is used in conjunction with the natural experiment afforded by the mad cow crisis to elicit empirical information on decision makers perception of uncertainty our theoretical and quantitative results suggest that observed behavior is consistent with sharp changes in beliefs and the presence of knightian uncertainty as measured by the degree of imprecision in our model

the impact of climate information on milk demand evidence from a field experiment it has been suggested that carbon labelling of food on voluntary or non voluntary basis could reduce emissions of greenhouse gases however there is limited empirical evidence on the influence of such labels on consumer purchases the purpose of this study was to investigate whether voluntary carbon labelling affects the demand for milk a randomized field experiment was conducted in 17 retail stores in sweden where a sign provided consumers with qualitative information about the carbon impact of climate certified milk the results suggest that the sign increased the demand for the climate certified milk by approximately 6 8 and the result is robust to alternative model specifications the effect is entirely driven by large stores such as supermarkets we find no statistically significant impact on total milk sales and the dataset is too small to verify the consequences for other milk brands the effect on the demand for the labelled milk is short lived

consumer s surplus without apology the purpose of this paper is to settle the controversy surrounding consumer s surplus and by so doing to validate its use as a tool of welfare economics i will show that observed consumer s surplus can be rigorously utilized to estimate the unobservable compensating and equivalent variations the correct theoretical measures of the welfare impact of changes in prices and income on an individual i derive precise upper and lower bounds on the percentage errors of approximating the compensating and equivalent variations with consumer s surplus these bounds can be explicitly calculated from observable demand data and it is clear that in most applications the error of approximation will be very small in fact the error will often be overshadowed by the errors involved in estimating the demand curve the results in no way depend upon arguments about the constancy of the marginal utility of income consequently this paper supplies specific empirical criteria which can replace the apologetic caveats frequently employed by those who presently apply consumer s surplus moreover the results imply that consumer s surplus is usually a very good approximation to the appropriate welfare measures to preview below i establish the validity of these rules of thumb for a

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

a re examination of the predictability of economic activity using the yield spread this paper revisits the yield spread s usefulness for predicting future real gdp growth we show that the contribution of the spread can be decomposed into the effect of expected future changes in short rates and the effect of the term premium we find that both factors are relevant for predicting real gdp growth but the respective contributions differ we investigate whether the cyclical behavior of interest rate volatility could account for either or both effects we find that while volatility displays important correlations with both the term structure of interest rates and gdp it does not appear to account for the yield spread s usefulness for predicting gdp growth

exploring the logic behind southern africa s food crises summary government action during food crises in southern africa frequently exacerbates the problems driving food staple prices well beyond import parity we argue that an inability to make credible commitments due largely to a lack of trust between public and private sectors contributes to this dynamic empirical policy analysis can facilitate resolution only within a consultative process involving a broad range of stakeholders the policies emerging from such a process are not likely to approximate first best recommendations yet the precise policies may be less important than the fact that they exist and that main stakeholders find them credible

prices poaching and protein alternatives an analysis of bushmeat consumption around serengeti national park tanzania abstract the consumption of meat from wild animals or bushmeat occurs throughout africa and highlights the conflict between two distinct development goals food security and biodiversity conservation growing human populations throughout the greater serengeti ecosystem rely heavily on bushmeat as a source of protein which places pressure on migratory wildlife populations this paper uses unique data from protein consumption surveys from 131 households over 34 months in a generalizable empirical framework to estimate price cross price and expenditure elasticities of protein sources and analyze the potential economic effects of policies to mitigate bushmeat hunting and consumption results suggest that 1 directly increasing the price of bushmeat through enforcement or other policies to reduce supply will have the most direct and largest effect of bushmeat consumption 2 increasing income increases bushmeat consumption as well as consumption of other meat sources 3 if surrounding fisheries experience a negative shock or collapse this will lead to a dramatic increase in bushmeat consumption overall these results strongly indicate that policies to reduce bushmeat hunting while maintaining food security must be considered in a broad and comprehensive framework

media coverage of biotech foods and influence on consumer choice in the last two decades few issues in the global agrifood sector have attracted as much media attention as biotechnology thousands of brief and in depth articles have been written focusing on diverse issues from the spectacle of ecological disasters to the promise of feeding a burgeoning world population among those accounts of alleged health risks could influence consumer perceptions and behavior directly indeed reporters across the globe have continued to draw parallels between biotechnology and other known food hazards such as mad cow disease and chemical contaminants such as dioxin they have also continued to raise the possibility of unknown long term health effects essentially framing biotechnology as a food safety risk marks and kalaitzandonakes marks et al there is evidence that this broad and often negative media coverage of biotechnology has raised public awareness influenced public perceptions and altered the public agenda on biotech foods in europe and elsewhere bauer durant bauer and gaskell this is not surprising as over 90 of consumers receive information about agrifood biotechnology primarily through the popular press and television hoban and kendall despite the apparent influence of media coverage on public perceptions however the question of whether such coverage has also affected consumer purchasing behavior has not been answered the answer to this question is broadly relevant with less than 2 of the u s population now engaged in agricultural production the average food consumer has diminishing personal experience and knowledge of agriculture

elasticities in aids models in the literature a variety of approaches have been used to calculate demand elasticities in almost ideal demand system aids models of demand it is common to estimate the linear approximate almost ideal demand system la aids instead of the aids when the la aids is estimated all of the previously reported approaches to compute elasticities are theoretically incorrect this paper presents correct formulas for la aids elasticities and illustrates the potential errors from using incorrect computing the almost ideal demand system aids of deaton and muellbauer 1980a b has become popular in recent years anderson and blundell blanciforti and green 1983a b blanciforti green and king chalfant eales and unnevehr fujii khaled and mak fulponi heien and willett murray parsons ray a variety of approaches to computing elasticities has been used and some of the approaches may lead to significant errors this paper clarifies the differences between alternative approaches to estimating demand elasticities in aids models

accounting for changes in tastes health concerns are thought by many to have shifted consumption away from red meats though econometric evidence is mixed testing for structural change is difficult especially when one time series is used for both estimating demand equations and testing their stability specification errors may suggest a shift where none has occurred using nonparametric demand analysis we find that meat consumption patterns in the united states and australia can be explained using only relative prices and expenditures only imposing particular functional forms can reverse the conclusion suggesting that specification errors in econometric demand studies can account for findings of taste changes

incorporating demand shifters in the almost ideal demand system abstract intercepts of share equations generally include demand shift variables in the almost ideal demand system and related models this results in estimates that depend on units of measurement solutions to this problem are identified and discussed

preference variable impacts in direct and inverse differential demand systems preference variables are included in the inverse rotterdam model based on the tintner ichimura basmann relationship linking preference effects on quantities demanded to price effects and preference effects on marginal utilities restrictions are placed on the effects of the preference variables on the marginal utilities resulting in reductions in the parameter space for the preference variables in both direct and inverse demand systems the model is used to analyze impacts of product quality on fresh citrus demand

information and consumer perception of the organic attribute in fresh fruits and vegetables using a double hurdle model on panel data from 3 200 danish households monthly observations for 2002 2007 we study the effects of health related media information on the demand for organic fruit and vegetables we find that negative information about pesticides contained in conventional fruit and vegetables mainly influences the probability of a consumer entering the organic market not the quantities consumed by households that are already active on the organic market positive information that links health and the consumption of organic food influences both steps of the decision process our dataset includes information about consumers media habits which allows us to disentangle the direct effects of media information from the indirect effects of this information as it is disseminated through the population our results suggest that directly obtained information is the main type of information influencing consumers while information loadings by dissemination through the population have almost no effect on consumption

does production labeling stigmatize conventional milk production labeling is a common approach for differentiating otherwise similar products in the marketplace while these labels may convey positive messages to consumers about the new product they may simultaneously stigmatize the conventionally produced product by highlighting perceived problems the net economic result for producers can be negative since consumers may decrease their willingness to pay for the conventional product that dominates the market while the new product has a relatively small market share this experimental research identifies this stigma effect in the case of milk where the introduction of rbst free and organic milk reduces consumers willingness to purchase conventional milk copyright 2009 oxford university press

united arab emirates trade policy review this paper reviews the wto s first trade policy review tpr of the united arab emirates the tpr raises a number of concerns about barriers to foreign investment and competition in reviewing the evaluation the approach adopted in this paper is to elaborate on two main issues insufficiently developed in the tpr the first is investment treaties which are treated by the uae as legally superior to and prevailing over domestic legal instruments the second is free trade zones which constitute an economic enclave free of barriers to foreign investment and competition the paper provides preliminary statistical evidence on the relationship between inward fdi free trade zones and bilateral investment treaties suggesting the presence of a statistically significant positive association between the three the evidence lends initial support to the concerns raised by the review

comparing heterogeneous consumption in u s and japanese meat and fish demand this article uses national quarterly data to conduct an empirical analysis of pre committed meat and fish demand by u s and japanese households using the generalized almost ideal demand system gaids pre committed demand represents the component of demand that is insensitive to both income and price adjustments u s consumers are found to hold significant positive pre committed demand for beef and pork while japanese consumers appear to possess significant positive pre committed demand for beef and fish this provides evidence to partially explain observed differences in japanese and u s consumer reactions to nonprice and nonincome effects in beef pork poultry and fish in addition based on inand out of sample performance the more general gaids is preferred to the almost ideal demand system aids for both the u s and japanese demand systems results lend to improved demand modeling efforts and more complete understanding of true market forces at hand in meat and fish markets for these culturally diverse consumer groups

you get what you pay for the link between price and food safety in kenya the lack of a reliably safe food supply in developing countries imposes both health and economic costs food safety is one of several dimensions of food quality that are typically unobservable at the time of purchase branding can overcome this information problem by allowing firms to build reputations based on the quality of their products if a reputation for food safety is valued directly by consumers or if food safety is correlated with other valued attributes firms producing safer food should be able to use their brand equity to charge higher prices in addition firms with stronger brand equity have stronger incentives to meet food safety standards in order to maintain that equity using data from more than 900 maize flour samples representing 23 distinct brands in eastern and central kenya we explore the relationship between price and contamination with aflatoxin aflatoxin is a fungal toxin common in maize groundnuts and other crops around the world we find a strong negative correlation between price and contamination at the brand level consistent with the hypothesized positive relationship between brand equity and food quality

structural change in the demand for meat economists have long thought that shocks in the economy sometimes lead to permanent changes in behavioral relationships hence supply or demand elasticities estimated from econometric models may change over time the source of such structural change may be technological adoption a shift in consumer preferences or an institutional change one way to handle this problem in linear models is to allow the parameters to change as the situation changes so that the model provides a local approximation of the behavioral relationship this approach is an attractive way to deal with structural change problems econometricians have extended the classical

simultaneity and structural change in u s meat demand an inverse of the almost ideal demand system the iaids is developed in order to test the endogeneity of prices and quantities in the u s meat demand system the iaids has all the desirable theoretical properties of the aids except aggregation from the micro to the market level using annual data both prices and quantities appear to be endogenous within the entire meat market including livestock production costs and technical change indicators as instruments eliminates evidence of a mid 1970s demand change

the quantity and variety of households meat purchases a censored demand system approach this study investigates the demand for 10 disaggregated meat products by u s households a censored demand system which imposes budget constraints in both observed and latent shares is estimated along with a detailed explanation of the estimation procedure additional details about the methodology not provided in previous studies should help researchers to empirically apply the model an innovation of the study is to introduce the censored demand system model for studying the variety of a household s food purchases most households buy between seven and eight different products and hardly change the variety of their purchases with changes in meat expenditure