We present a model of vertical contracts between manufacturers and retailers with nonlinear pricing strategies. Using home-scan data on bottled water produced by manufacturers and sold by retail ...chains in France, we estimate a structural demand and supply model allowing for twopart tariff contracts between manufacturers and retailers. Using price-cost margins recovered from estimates of demand parameters, we select the best supply model by performing nonnested tests, and find that manufacturers use two-part tariff contracts with resale price maintenance. We then perform counterfactual policy simulations that restrict the use of these vertical contracts and assess welfare effects under alternative scenarios.
To examine whether four pre-selected front-of-pack nutrition labels improve food purchases in real-life grocery shopping settings, we put 1.9 million labels on 1266 food products in four categories ...in 60 supermarkets and analyzed the nutritional quality of 1,668,301 purchases using the FSA nutrient profiling score. Effect sizes were 17 times smaller on average than those found in comparable laboratory studies. The most effective nutrition label, Nutri-Score, increased the purchases of foods in the top third of their category nutrition-wise by 14%, but had no impact on the purchases of foods with medium, low, or unlabeled nutrition quality. Therefore, Nutri-Score only improved the nutritional quality of the basket of labeled foods purchased by 2.5% (−0.142 FSA points). Nutri-Score’s performance improved with the variance (but not the mean) of the nutritional quality of the category. In-store surveys suggest that Nutri-Score’s ability to attract attention and help shoppers rank products by nutritional quality may explain its performance.
Agricultural production is among the industries with the highest impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially in the production of ruminant meats. Households can ...change their food consumption habits so as to consume less polluting products such as white meat or vegetable-based food. We analyze whether or not a CO2 equivalent (CO2-eq) tax policy in France can change household habits with respect to animal product purchases, and their environmental impact. Using two levels of a CO2-eq tax (€56 and €200 per tonne of CO2-eq) applied to the consumption of all animal products, only ruminant meats or only beef, we show that a high level of tax does not allow meeting the 20% objective threshold of GHG emissions reduction for 2020 since it would lead to a 6% decrease in GHG emissions only. Despite the weak effect of such a tax, the most efficient scenario would be to tax the consumption of beef only at a high level. Indeed, this tax policy would allow reaching a 3.2% decrease in GHG emissions, that represents 53% of the variation in GHG emissions when all products are taxed whereas it would only generate 12% of the household welfare damages.
•We examine health-related policy instruments and economic mechanisms to reduce meat consumption.•Health-related taxation could be the most effective instrument to reduce meat consumption.•Eating ...meat affects climate, biodiversity, water use, and pollution.•Promoting healthy behaviors by reducing meat consumption can also have environmental co-benefits.
Global meat consumption has risen steadily in recent decades, with heterogeneous growth rates across regions. While meat plays a critical role in providing essential nutrients for human health, excessive consumption of meat, particularly red and processed meat, has also been associated with a higher risk of certain chronic diseases. This has led public authorities, including the World Health Organization, to call for a reduction in meat consumption. How governments can effectively reduce the health costs of meat consumption remains a challenge as implementing effective policy instruments is complex. This paper examines health-related policy instruments and potential economic mechanisms that could reduce meat consumption. Health-related taxation could be the most effective instrument. Other policy instruments, such as informational and behavioral instruments, along with regulations, could discourage meat consumption depending on the policy design. We also provide evidence on the link between meat consumption and the environment, including climate, biodiversity, water use, and pollution. Promoting healthy behaviors by reducing meat consumption can then have environmental co-benefits and promote broader sustainable development goals. We also discuss the policy-related challenges that need to be addressed to meet environmental co-benefits.
Meat consumption has increased significantly in the last 50 years. This trend raises various health and environmental issues, as well as moral concerns regarding farm animal welfare. In this paper, ...we discuss the regulation of meat consumption in developed countries. Specifically, we discuss possible justifications for this regulation in terms of environmental, health and animal welfare considerations, as well as the effect of fiscal, informational and behavioral regulatory instruments. Finally, we present a list of challenges that policy makers and food scholars may need to confront in the future.
The paper determines how the value-added created by an organic label is shared in a vertical chain among manufacturers and retailers. Using purchase data on the French fluid milk sector, we develop a ...structural econometric model of demand and supply that takes into account the bargaining power between manufacturers and retailers. Our results suggest that the organic label segment is more profitable, as it permits the existence of higher margins. Moreover, an organic label allows manufacturers to achieve more bargaining power relative to retailers, and hence to obtain a higher share of total margins. The econometric model is then used to assess the impact of an environmental policy in favor of the organic segment based on a mechanism of price support. Our results suggest that while a subsidy policy towards organic products benefits both manufacturers and retailers, a tax policy toward conventional products benefits manufacturers of national brands at the expense of retailers and manufacturers that provide the private labels. The benefits of such policies on the environment is relatively small. All such policies tend to increase the impact on global warming and land use, but reduce the impact on eutrophication, acidification, and energy use.
Hematopoiesis is a biological phenomenon (process) of production of mature blood cells by cellular differentiation. It is based on amplification steps due to an interplay between renewal and ...differentiation in the successive cell types from stem cells to mature blood cells. We will study this mechanism with a stochastic point of view to explain unexpected fluctuations on the mature blood cell number, as surprisingly observed by biologists and medical doctors in a rest hematopoiesis. We consider three cell types: stem cells, progenitors and mature blood cells. Each cell type is characterized by its own dynamics parameters, the division rate and the renewal and differentiation probabilities at each division event. We model the global population dynamics by a three-dimensional stochastic decomposable branching process. We show that the amplification mechanism is given by the inverse of the small difference between the differentiation and renewal probabilities. Introducing a parameter
K
which scales simultaneously the size of the first component, the differentiation and renewal probabilities and the mature blood cell death rate, we describe the asymptotic behavior of the process for large
K
. We show that each cell type has its own size and time scales. Focusing on the third component, we prove that the mature blood cell population size, conveniently renormalized (in time and size), is expanded in an unusual way inducing large fluctuations. The proofs are based on a fine study of the different scales involved in the model and on the use of different convergence and average techniques in the proofs.
To assess the impact of taxation on the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) most economic studies using household data consider the average consumer. Individual consumption is, however, ...very heterogeneous. In this paper, we propose a three-step methodology to evaluate the impact of SSB taxation on individual consumption. First, we use a disaggregation method to recover individual consumption from observed household consumption. Second, we estimate the demand for different categories of households. Finally, we simulate the impact of a tax policy on individual consumption. We find a high level of heterogeneity in consumption. Adults, both men and women, consume a greater quantity of SSBs than children. More importantly, for any given age category, the average consumption of SSBs increases with body mass index (BMI). Among heavy consumers of SSBs, obese and overweight people are over-represented. In France, a €0.20/l tax on SSBs might decrease sugar intake by more than 2 kg per year on average and by more than 5 kg, roughly 3 teaspoons/day, for 5% of the adult population. Moreover, overweight and obese men and women, who correspond to 41% of the adult population, represent 56% of the last five percentiles of the distribution of the variation in sugar intake. This is a key result because the objective of taxation is to decrease the consumption of individuals who are more at risk, that is those who are overweight and obese. We also show that classical method of the assessment of tax policies based on per-capita consumption underestimate the effect of the tax for obese adults by 9%. Finally, we estimate that a €0.20/l tax on SSBs might avoid about 640 deaths (about 1.6% of the considered diseases) as a consequence of the decrease in SSB consumption.
•In France, a €0.20/l tax on SSBs might decrease annual French sugar intake by at least 2 kgs.•A €0.20/l tax on SSBs might avoid about 640 deaths.•A €0.20/l tax on SSBs is more efficient on obese individuals.
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