1,721,037 research outputs found
Book Review: Fat economics: Nutrition, health and economic policy. By Mario Mazzocchi, W.Bruce Traill, Jason F. Shogren
No full textBook Review: Fat economics: Nutrition, health and economic policy. By Mario Mazzocchi, W.Bruce Traill, Jason F. Shogre
Book Review: Nutrition Economics: Principles and Policy Applications
Full text linkThe book by Babu, Gajanan, and Hallam is a welcome addition to the not-so populated toolbox for nutrition policy analysts. “Nutrition Economics” covers theoretical and empirical aspects that are central to policy evaluation, and provides short and effective coverage of methods for non-experimental data, together with references, examples and Stata codes. It is a valuable primer for graduate students and practitioners willing to face the challenges of nutrition policy evaluation
Food Policy
Full text linkFood Policy is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original research and novel evidence on issues in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of policies for the food sector in developing, transition, and advanced economies. Its main focus is on the economic and social aspect of food policy, and we prioritize empirical studies informing international food policy debates.
Policy issues that are relevant to the journal include:
• Food production, trade, marketing, and consumption
• Nutrition and health aspects of food systems
• Food needs, entitlements, security, and aid
• Food safety and quality assurance
• Technological and institutional innovation affecting food systems and access
• Food systems and environmental sustainabilit
The economics of the nutrition and sustainable diet transition
No full textThe process of economic development brings along a transformation of diets that initially generates benefits in the form of additional calories and reduced undernutrition, but growing prosperity eventually correlates with nutritionally undesirable adjustments and a rise in diet-related chronic diseases. This nutrition transition has also considerable macroeconomic and environmental significance, making the search for underlying causes an important priority for food economists interested in sustainable diets. Most of existing research, however, originates from public health and points to broad distal macroeconomic factors, such as urbanization and globalization, without identifying the precise behavioural and structural causes of the transition. In this context, food economics provides a framework to disentangle the influences of the numerous correlates of economic development (for example, prices, income, state of the labour market, health care, informational environment). The chapter reviews this framework and its few applications, concluding to the need for more research into the factors linked to economic development that drive food choices. Building a deep understanding of the causes of the nutritional transition is a necessary first step to harness the potential of dietary change to contribute to the 'Great Food Transformation' required to make food systems sustainable
Estimation of unobservable selection effects in on-line surveys through propensity score matching: An application to public acceptance of healthy eating policies
Full text linkThe use of model-based propensity scores as matching tools opens the way to the indirect estimation of mode-related measurement effects and selection effects in web surveys, including a component of selection that cannot be traced back to observable characteristics. By matching and comparing respondents from real independent surveys that use the same questionnaire, but different administration modes, it becomes possible to isolate the selection effect induced by unobservable (or unobserved) respondent characteristics. This study applies a stratification matching algorithm to compare a web survey from a proprietary panel with a computer-assisted telephone survey based on random digit-dialing. The experiment is run in two countries (UK and Italy) to check for consistencies across different cultures and different internet penetration rates. The application to the elicitation of support for healthy eating policies indicates large and significant measurement and selection effects. After controlling for differences in the observed characteristics of respondents and the intensity of internet use, findings suggest that web surveys record lower support and higher neutrality. Similarly, after controlling for administration mode and observed respondent characteristics, internet users are less likely to state support compared to non-users. This suggests that unobserved characteristics play a major role, and post-stratification weighting is not a sufficient countermeasure. As demonstrated by the cross-country comparison, rising internet penetration rates are not a guarantee against this type of error, as disparities in these unobserved characteristics are likely to increase at the same time.</div
Demand drivers and changes in food-related emissions in the UK: A decomposition approach
Full text linkUK food-related greenhouse gas emissions have substantially decreased over the last two decades in response to changes in the household food baskets. The evolution of diets depends on a combination of driving forces, not necessarily acting in the same direction. We propose a decomposition of household food choices which separates changes in tastes and consumer preferences from the effects of prices, household budgets, and socio-demographic trends. More specifically, we explore to what extent these drivers facilitate or hinder the adoption of sustainable food choices. Our decomposition strategy is grounded on a theory-consistent demand system to account for substitution effects across food groups. We find that the decline in UK food-related emissions is primarily driven by reductions in household food budgets and evolving food preferences. Relative price dynamics and de-mographic trends act in the opposite direction, but their effect is small. Our evidence suggests that policy in-terventions aiming to shape consumer preferences towards more sustainable choices could be a valid instrument to further reduce food-related emissions in the UK
Discrete choice models and continuous demand systems in the scanner data age
No full textThe growing availability of high-frequency scanner data, collected either at the retail or at the household level, has brought new perspectives and challenges to the estimation of empirical demand models. This chapter reviews the state-of-the-art and perspectives of demand systems and discrete choice models in order to compare them in relation to five key theoretical and technical challenges: (1) dealing with zeroes, that is, non-purchases and corner solutions; (2) product aggregation and category-level policy analysis, quality choices and price data; (3) endogeneity of prices and expenditure; (4) habits, dynamic models and intertemporal optimization (for example, stockpiling); (5) consumer observed and unobserved heterogeneity and tastes
A Robust Score-Driven Filter for Multivariate Time Series
Full text linkA multivariate score-driven filter is developed to extract signals from noisy
vector processes. By assuming that the conditional location vector from a
multivariate Student's t distribution changes over time, we construct a robust
filter which is able to overcome several issues that naturally arise when
modeling heavy-tailed phenomena and, more in general, vectors of dependent
non-Gaussian time series. We derive conditions for stationarity and
invertibility and estimate the unknown parameters by maximum likelihood (ML).
Strong consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator are proved and the
finite sample properties are illustrated by a Monte-Carlo study. From a
computational point of view, analytical formulae are derived, which consent to
develop estimation procedures based on the Fisher scoring method. The theory is
supported by a novel empirical illustration that shows how the model can be
effectively applied to estimate consumer prices from home scanner data
Food purchasing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Italian household scanner data
Full text linkThis study analyses food and drink purchasing patterns of the Italian population after the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. Based on governmental restrictions at national and regional level, we explore changes in consumption behaviour due to enacted restrictions. Several phenomena may have affected food and drink purchases: (i) closure of restaurants and bars, schools and workplaces necessary implies a shift towards home consumption of meals, hence a higher quantity of food and drink purchased for consumption at-home, due to substitution; (ii) fewer visits to stores because of stay at home restrictions and anticipation of potential food shortages may induce stockpiling and online shopping; (iii) the quality (as proxied by unit values) of purchased food may change because of fewer promotions and increased propensity to save money; (iv) increased time availability because of abridging commuting time and cancelling out-of-home leisure activities may cause a shift towards purchases of raw ingredients, and a decrease in purchases of ready meal and convenience foods; (v) increased psychological distress caused by imposed restrictions and negative news may increase emotional consumption of some food and drinks.
In order to test for the relevance of these factors, we use household scanner data on food and drink purchases in Italy, covering food weekly purchases and soft-drinks daily purchases for a panel of nearly ten thousand households over the years 2019 and 2020
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