This study assesses the impact of broilers raised without antibiotics and the information gap tha... more This study assesses the impact of broilers raised without antibiotics and the information gap that exists between consumer perception and production methods. Specifically looking at risk of eye burns, footpad lesions, and airsacculitis, key indicators of animal welfare, bird-level data are collected on the occurrence and severity of each disease state by the type of antibiotic program: no antibiotics ever, nonmedically important antibiotics, or medically important antibiotics. Odds ratios and marginal effects are calculated to understand how the occurrence and severity change with access to medicine. Broilers never given antibiotics had a higher likelihood of disease states investigated, and with greater severity. In some cases, access to nonmedically important ionophores mitigated the risk of occurrence and severity of the conditions. The finding indicates that the growing trend of raising broilers without antibiotics may negatively affect animal welfare. This stands in contrast to...
This study examines the relationship between generic advertising and perceived value for 100 perc... more This study examines the relationship between generic advertising and perceived value for 100 percent orange juice using data from a survey on consumption, perceived value, advertising awareness, and other key measures. We investigate the relationships between consumption and perceived value and between generic advertising and perceived value and identify features of generic advertising of orange juice that have the greatest influence on consumers. Our analysis indicates that perceived value is strongly associated with increased consumption and is influenced by generic advertising. Generic advertising is most effective when consumers view the content of the ads as genuine and relevant.
The relationship between calorie and nutrient (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) intake as a funct... more The relationship between calorie and nutrient (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) intake as a function of income is explored using data for 171 countries over two time periods 1990-1992 and 2003-2005. Three types of analysis are employed: i) nonparametric, ii) panel regressions, and iii) quantile regressions. Engle curves for calories, fat, and protein are approximately linear in logs with carbohydrate intakes exhibiting diminishing elasticities as incomes increase, becoming negative around $US7500 and above. Other nutrient and calorie elasticity estimates are positive statistically significant. Elasticities range from 0.10 to 0.25, with fat having the highest elasticities. The estimated elasticities for the quantile regressions are similar across the 0.25, 0.50 and 0.75 quantiles, but with moderate evidence that countries in the higher quantiles have lower elasticities than those in the lower quantiles. There has been a small but significant shift in the elasticities across the two periods.
ABSTRACT Obesity and diabetes are increasingly attributed to environmental factors, however, litt... more ABSTRACT Obesity and diabetes are increasingly attributed to environmental factors, however, little attention has been paid to the influence of the 'local' food economy. This paper examines the association of measures relating to the built environment and 'local' agriculture with U.S. county-level prevalence of obesity and diabetes. Key indicators of the 'local' food economy include the density of farmers' markets and the presence of farms with direct sales. This paper employs a robust regression estimator to account for non-normality of the data and to accommodate outliers. Overall, the built environment is associated with the prevalence of obesity and diabetes and a strong local' food economy may play an important role in prevention. Results imply considerable scope for community-level interventions.
The impact of covariates on obesity in the US is investigated, with particular attention given to... more The impact of covariates on obesity in the US is investigated, with particular attention given to the role of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The potential endogeneity of participation in SNAP is considered as a potential problem in investigating its causal in ‡uence on obesity using instrumental variable (IV) approaches. Due to the presence of heteroscedasticity in the errors, the approach for dealing with heteroscedastic errors in Geweke (1993) is extended to the Bayesian instrumental variable estimator outlined in Rossi et al. (2005). This approach leads to substantively di¤erent …ndings to a standard classical IV approach to correcting for heteroscedasticity. Although …ndings support the contention that the SNAP participation rate is associated with a greater prevalence of obesity, the evidence for this impact is substantially weakened when using the methods introduced in the paper.
Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch ge... more Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public.
This paper examines the health effects of a fiscal food policy based on a combination of fat taxe... more This paper examines the health effects of a fiscal food policy based on a combination of fat taxes and thin subsidies. The fat tax is based on the saturated fat content of food items while the thin subsidy is applied to select fruit and vegetable items. The policy is designed to be revenue neutral so that the subsidy exactly offsets the revenue from the fat tax. A model of food demand is estimated using Bayesian methods that accounts for censoring and infrequency of purchase (the problem of unit values is also discussed). The estimated of demand elasticities are used to compute nutrient elasticities which demonstrate how consumption of specific nutrients changes based on price changes in particular foods from the fiscal policy. Results show that while the fat tax decreases saturated fat intake, consumption of other important nutrients is also decreased, which may lead to negative health outcomes.
The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall effectiveness... more The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall effectiveness of such fiscal instruments in altering diets and improving health. However, little is known about the welfare impacts of fiscal food policies on society. This paper fills a gap in the literature by assessing the distributional impacts and welfare effects resulting from a tax-subsidy combination on different food groups. Using the methods derived from marginal tax reform theory, a formal welfare economics framework is developed allowing the calculation of the distributional characteristics of various food groups and approximate welfare measures of prices changes caused by a tax-subsidy combination. The distributional characteristics reveal that many of the food groups target by a fat tax are consumed in greater concentration by low-income households than higher-income households. The overall welfare effect of a fat tax and thin subsidy combination is found to be negative, meaning that th...
We show that immigrant managers are substantially more likely to hire immigrants than are native ... more We show that immigrant managers are substantially more likely to hire immigrants than are native managers. The finding holds when comparing establishments in the same 5-digit industry and location, when comparing different establishments within the same firm, when analyzing establishments that change management over time, and when accounting for within-establishment trends in recruitment patterns. The effects are largest for small and owner-managed establishments in the for-profit sector. Separations are more frequent when workers and managers have dissimilar origin, but only before workers become protected by EPL. We also find that native managers are unbiased in their recruitments of former co-workers, suggesting that information deficiencies are important. We find no effects on entry wages. Our findings suggest that a low frequency of immigrant managers may contribute to the observed disadvantages of immigrant workers.
Consumers are increasingly interested in the attributes of the food they consume. This includes w... more Consumers are increasingly interested in the attributes of the food they consume. This includes what is in the food and how it was raised; and at least some consumers are willing to pay a premium for products with specific attributes. However, the current plethora of labels on the market does not adequately address this issue; rather than providing actionable information, most labels add to the consumer confusion. In addition, there is a tendency toward "absence labels" that can contribute to a negative consumer perception of conventional products that may or may not include the attribute in question. Communication with consumers about the complex and highly technical issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is challenging, and experiences from communication efforts about food safety-related issues demonstrate exactly how challenging this is to communicate clearly. General lessons learned from the science of risk communication can help guide efforts to communicate about the challenging issue of AMR. There are efforts underway to chart out a new approach. A new labeled animal production certification program is under development to provide choice for consumers, while reducing consumer confusion, which mandates antibiotic stewardship practices.
Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, 2014
The chapter investigates: (1) Do married parents efficiently allocate time to children&am... more The chapter investigates: (1) Do married parents efficiently allocate time to children's health care? (2) Are parents willing to sacrifice consumption for health improvements at an equal rate for all family members? (3) How does family structure affect health trade-offs parents make? (4) Are parental choices consistent with maximization of a single utility function? A model is specified focusing on how parents allocate resources between consumption and goods that relieve acute illnesses for family members. Equivalent surplus functions measuring parental willingness to pay to relieve acute illnesses are estimated using data from a stated-preference survey. Results provide limited support for the prediction that married parents allocate time to child health care according to comparative advantage. Valuations of avoided illness vary between family members and are inconsistent with the hypothesis that fathers' and mothers' choices reflect a common utility function. Prior research on children's health valuation has relied on a unitary framework that is rejected here. Valuation researchers have focused on allocation of resources between parents and children while ignoring allocation of resources among children, whereas results suggest significant heterogeneity in valuation of health of different types of children and of children in different types of households. Results may provide a justification on efficiency grounds for policies to provide special protection for children's health and suggest that benefit-cost analyses of policies affecting health should include separate estimates of the benefits of health improvements for children and adults.
The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall eectiveness o... more The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall eectiveness of such scal instruments in altering diets and improving health. However, little is known about the welfare impacts of scal food policies on society. This paper lls a gap in the literature by assessing the distributional impacts and welfare eects resulting from a tax-subsidy combination on dierent food groups. Using the methods derived from marginal tax reform theory, a formal welfare economics framework is developed allowing the calculation of the distributional characteristics of various food groups and approximate welfare measures of prices changes caused by a tax-subsidy combination. The distributional characteristics reveal that many of the food groups targeted by a fat tax are consumed in greater concentration by low-income households than higher-income households. The overall welfare eect of a fat tax in isolation is found to be negative. While the inclusion of a thin subsidy still results in welfare losses, the negative impact of the fat tax is mostly mitigated by the presence of the thin subsidy. Results suggest there is scope for the design of a scal food policy to combat obesity and poor dietary choice that is both revenue neutral and welfare minimising.
Food insecurity results in adverse health status and represents a pressing public health priority... more Food insecurity results in adverse health status and represents a pressing public health priority. Much of the existing research focuses on the association of household and individual level factors with food insecurity. The influence of broader environmental factors, such as macroeconomic conditions, receives much less attention. This paper examines the impacts of macroeconomic factors on the prevalence of food insecurity in the United States by using a panel estimation approach. This paper fills an important gap in the literature by decomposing the relationship between food insecurity and state-level macroeconomic conditions on the basis of the severity of food insecurity. Findings suggest that although macroeconomic based policies may be effective at reducing the prevalence of moderate food insecurity such policies are less likely to be effective in reducing cases of severe food insecurity.
AdditionAl index words. econometric model, elasticity, forecast, orange juice This paper presents... more AdditionAl index words. econometric model, elasticity, forecast, orange juice This paper presents an economic model of long-run production and consumption forecasts for Florida oranges. This is accomplished through a quantitative model of the world orange juice market. By conducting model simulations, pos-sible answers to key questions about the future of the Florida citrus industry are provided. Will prices be high enough to cover costs? What will be the size of the Florida citrus industry in the future? What will be the impact of the citrus industry on the Florida economy? Although answers to such questions can only be provided in a probabilistic sense, such answers are critical for future planning purposes. The model used to examine how different external factors including citrus canker, greening, land development, and cost increases may impact the Florida citrus industry are discussed in this paper. While these factors mainly affect supply, demand may also be affected due to los...
This study assesses the impact of broilers raised without antibiotics and the information gap tha... more This study assesses the impact of broilers raised without antibiotics and the information gap that exists between consumer perception and production methods. Specifically looking at risk of eye burns, footpad lesions, and airsacculitis, key indicators of animal welfare, bird-level data are collected on the occurrence and severity of each disease state by the type of antibiotic program: no antibiotics ever, nonmedically important antibiotics, or medically important antibiotics. Odds ratios and marginal effects are calculated to understand how the occurrence and severity change with access to medicine. Broilers never given antibiotics had a higher likelihood of disease states investigated, and with greater severity. In some cases, access to nonmedically important ionophores mitigated the risk of occurrence and severity of the conditions. The finding indicates that the growing trend of raising broilers without antibiotics may negatively affect animal welfare. This stands in contrast to...
This study examines the relationship between generic advertising and perceived value for 100 perc... more This study examines the relationship between generic advertising and perceived value for 100 percent orange juice using data from a survey on consumption, perceived value, advertising awareness, and other key measures. We investigate the relationships between consumption and perceived value and between generic advertising and perceived value and identify features of generic advertising of orange juice that have the greatest influence on consumers. Our analysis indicates that perceived value is strongly associated with increased consumption and is influenced by generic advertising. Generic advertising is most effective when consumers view the content of the ads as genuine and relevant.
The relationship between calorie and nutrient (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) intake as a funct... more The relationship between calorie and nutrient (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) intake as a function of income is explored using data for 171 countries over two time periods 1990-1992 and 2003-2005. Three types of analysis are employed: i) nonparametric, ii) panel regressions, and iii) quantile regressions. Engle curves for calories, fat, and protein are approximately linear in logs with carbohydrate intakes exhibiting diminishing elasticities as incomes increase, becoming negative around $US7500 and above. Other nutrient and calorie elasticity estimates are positive statistically significant. Elasticities range from 0.10 to 0.25, with fat having the highest elasticities. The estimated elasticities for the quantile regressions are similar across the 0.25, 0.50 and 0.75 quantiles, but with moderate evidence that countries in the higher quantiles have lower elasticities than those in the lower quantiles. There has been a small but significant shift in the elasticities across the two periods.
ABSTRACT Obesity and diabetes are increasingly attributed to environmental factors, however, litt... more ABSTRACT Obesity and diabetes are increasingly attributed to environmental factors, however, little attention has been paid to the influence of the 'local' food economy. This paper examines the association of measures relating to the built environment and 'local' agriculture with U.S. county-level prevalence of obesity and diabetes. Key indicators of the 'local' food economy include the density of farmers' markets and the presence of farms with direct sales. This paper employs a robust regression estimator to account for non-normality of the data and to accommodate outliers. Overall, the built environment is associated with the prevalence of obesity and diabetes and a strong local' food economy may play an important role in prevention. Results imply considerable scope for community-level interventions.
The impact of covariates on obesity in the US is investigated, with particular attention given to... more The impact of covariates on obesity in the US is investigated, with particular attention given to the role of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The potential endogeneity of participation in SNAP is considered as a potential problem in investigating its causal in ‡uence on obesity using instrumental variable (IV) approaches. Due to the presence of heteroscedasticity in the errors, the approach for dealing with heteroscedastic errors in Geweke (1993) is extended to the Bayesian instrumental variable estimator outlined in Rossi et al. (2005). This approach leads to substantively di¤erent …ndings to a standard classical IV approach to correcting for heteroscedasticity. Although …ndings support the contention that the SNAP participation rate is associated with a greater prevalence of obesity, the evidence for this impact is substantially weakened when using the methods introduced in the paper.
Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch ge... more Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public.
This paper examines the health effects of a fiscal food policy based on a combination of fat taxe... more This paper examines the health effects of a fiscal food policy based on a combination of fat taxes and thin subsidies. The fat tax is based on the saturated fat content of food items while the thin subsidy is applied to select fruit and vegetable items. The policy is designed to be revenue neutral so that the subsidy exactly offsets the revenue from the fat tax. A model of food demand is estimated using Bayesian methods that accounts for censoring and infrequency of purchase (the problem of unit values is also discussed). The estimated of demand elasticities are used to compute nutrient elasticities which demonstrate how consumption of specific nutrients changes based on price changes in particular foods from the fiscal policy. Results show that while the fat tax decreases saturated fat intake, consumption of other important nutrients is also decreased, which may lead to negative health outcomes.
The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall effectiveness... more The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall effectiveness of such fiscal instruments in altering diets and improving health. However, little is known about the welfare impacts of fiscal food policies on society. This paper fills a gap in the literature by assessing the distributional impacts and welfare effects resulting from a tax-subsidy combination on different food groups. Using the methods derived from marginal tax reform theory, a formal welfare economics framework is developed allowing the calculation of the distributional characteristics of various food groups and approximate welfare measures of prices changes caused by a tax-subsidy combination. The distributional characteristics reveal that many of the food groups target by a fat tax are consumed in greater concentration by low-income households than higher-income households. The overall welfare effect of a fat tax and thin subsidy combination is found to be negative, meaning that th...
We show that immigrant managers are substantially more likely to hire immigrants than are native ... more We show that immigrant managers are substantially more likely to hire immigrants than are native managers. The finding holds when comparing establishments in the same 5-digit industry and location, when comparing different establishments within the same firm, when analyzing establishments that change management over time, and when accounting for within-establishment trends in recruitment patterns. The effects are largest for small and owner-managed establishments in the for-profit sector. Separations are more frequent when workers and managers have dissimilar origin, but only before workers become protected by EPL. We also find that native managers are unbiased in their recruitments of former co-workers, suggesting that information deficiencies are important. We find no effects on entry wages. Our findings suggest that a low frequency of immigrant managers may contribute to the observed disadvantages of immigrant workers.
Consumers are increasingly interested in the attributes of the food they consume. This includes w... more Consumers are increasingly interested in the attributes of the food they consume. This includes what is in the food and how it was raised; and at least some consumers are willing to pay a premium for products with specific attributes. However, the current plethora of labels on the market does not adequately address this issue; rather than providing actionable information, most labels add to the consumer confusion. In addition, there is a tendency toward "absence labels" that can contribute to a negative consumer perception of conventional products that may or may not include the attribute in question. Communication with consumers about the complex and highly technical issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is challenging, and experiences from communication efforts about food safety-related issues demonstrate exactly how challenging this is to communicate clearly. General lessons learned from the science of risk communication can help guide efforts to communicate about the challenging issue of AMR. There are efforts underway to chart out a new approach. A new labeled animal production certification program is under development to provide choice for consumers, while reducing consumer confusion, which mandates antibiotic stewardship practices.
Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, 2014
The chapter investigates: (1) Do married parents efficiently allocate time to children&am... more The chapter investigates: (1) Do married parents efficiently allocate time to children's health care? (2) Are parents willing to sacrifice consumption for health improvements at an equal rate for all family members? (3) How does family structure affect health trade-offs parents make? (4) Are parental choices consistent with maximization of a single utility function? A model is specified focusing on how parents allocate resources between consumption and goods that relieve acute illnesses for family members. Equivalent surplus functions measuring parental willingness to pay to relieve acute illnesses are estimated using data from a stated-preference survey. Results provide limited support for the prediction that married parents allocate time to child health care according to comparative advantage. Valuations of avoided illness vary between family members and are inconsistent with the hypothesis that fathers' and mothers' choices reflect a common utility function. Prior research on children's health valuation has relied on a unitary framework that is rejected here. Valuation researchers have focused on allocation of resources between parents and children while ignoring allocation of resources among children, whereas results suggest significant heterogeneity in valuation of health of different types of children and of children in different types of households. Results may provide a justification on efficiency grounds for policies to provide special protection for children's health and suggest that benefit-cost analyses of policies affecting health should include separate estimates of the benefits of health improvements for children and adults.
The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall eectiveness o... more The extant literature on fat taxes and thin subsidies tends to focus on the overall eectiveness of such scal instruments in altering diets and improving health. However, little is known about the welfare impacts of scal food policies on society. This paper lls a gap in the literature by assessing the distributional impacts and welfare eects resulting from a tax-subsidy combination on dierent food groups. Using the methods derived from marginal tax reform theory, a formal welfare economics framework is developed allowing the calculation of the distributional characteristics of various food groups and approximate welfare measures of prices changes caused by a tax-subsidy combination. The distributional characteristics reveal that many of the food groups targeted by a fat tax are consumed in greater concentration by low-income households than higher-income households. The overall welfare eect of a fat tax in isolation is found to be negative. While the inclusion of a thin subsidy still results in welfare losses, the negative impact of the fat tax is mostly mitigated by the presence of the thin subsidy. Results suggest there is scope for the design of a scal food policy to combat obesity and poor dietary choice that is both revenue neutral and welfare minimising.
Food insecurity results in adverse health status and represents a pressing public health priority... more Food insecurity results in adverse health status and represents a pressing public health priority. Much of the existing research focuses on the association of household and individual level factors with food insecurity. The influence of broader environmental factors, such as macroeconomic conditions, receives much less attention. This paper examines the impacts of macroeconomic factors on the prevalence of food insecurity in the United States by using a panel estimation approach. This paper fills an important gap in the literature by decomposing the relationship between food insecurity and state-level macroeconomic conditions on the basis of the severity of food insecurity. Findings suggest that although macroeconomic based policies may be effective at reducing the prevalence of moderate food insecurity such policies are less likely to be effective in reducing cases of severe food insecurity.
AdditionAl index words. econometric model, elasticity, forecast, orange juice This paper presents... more AdditionAl index words. econometric model, elasticity, forecast, orange juice This paper presents an economic model of long-run production and consumption forecasts for Florida oranges. This is accomplished through a quantitative model of the world orange juice market. By conducting model simulations, pos-sible answers to key questions about the future of the Florida citrus industry are provided. Will prices be high enough to cover costs? What will be the size of the Florida citrus industry in the future? What will be the impact of the citrus industry on the Florida economy? Although answers to such questions can only be provided in a probabilistic sense, such answers are critical for future planning purposes. The model used to examine how different external factors including citrus canker, greening, land development, and cost increases may impact the Florida citrus industry are discussed in this paper. While these factors mainly affect supply, demand may also be affected due to los...
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