This paper addresses the challenges facing China in accelerating the pace of rural-urban migration as part of its on-going economic development programme. It explains the push and pull influences on migration and in particular explains why a continuing focus on urbanisation is justified by the...

Using a unique dataset of maize samples and consumer interviews form Eastern Kenya, we find that the presence of the fungal contaminant aflatoxin is negatively associated with the use of maize flour for food. While food remains the most common use of maize regardless of the presence of the...

Food processing has been widely recognized as a traditional, unskilled-labor intensive production. Yet rapid development in technology drives food processing into more sophisticated and technology-oriented industry. This paper utilizes a fixed effects model to test the hypothesis that the food...

This paper uses stated and revealed preference data from a choice-based conjoint survey instrument to estimate willingness to pay for distance-based local food products. The survey was administered to three different groups of respondents: members of a consumer buying club, a random sample of...

Chinese have been experiencing dramatic changes in their body weight in the last ten years. Food service sector is believed to have significant effect on the rise of obesity in China. This paper analyses Body Mass Index (BMI) and overweight issue of adults 18 years and above in urban China with...

A survey with validation question was delivered to 3475 respondents to study the impact of using validation question to improve data quality. Results show that The respondents who passed the validation question had significantly older ages, higher median incomes and higher education levels. The...

Iowa egg producers recalled nearly 500 million eggs in August 2010. The typical effect of a recall is to cause a decline in the demand for the affected product, yielding a decrease in the price. In the case of August 2010 egg recall, the price of eggs increased in the following weeks. This essay...

It is well acknowledged that the entrepreneurship is important to economic development. In this paper, we suggest a gender-related determinant of entrepreneurship, local sex imbalance. Using a 2009 rural finance survey, we examine how this imbalance influences the venturing at the household...

Given the credence nature of food quality and food safety attributes, consumers rely on abstract systems of regulation as well as quality signals such as brands to make informed choices. Motivated by the need to further investigate what influences consumer confidence in credence attributes, this...

This study presents evidence of a structural change in consumer behavior to recalls of ground beef made by the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) after the December 2003 announcement confirming the discovery of a dairy cow infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in the United...