Despite the economic damage inflicted by a foodborne disease outbreak, firms at all points in the supply chain appear to be reluctant to invest in the necessary food safety technologies and practices. We argue that these investments are subject to both hysteretic and public good effects, and...

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...

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...

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...

This paper examines the impact of food safety standards imposed on suppliers of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program by the Agricultural Marketing Service. Probit regression results show that plants approved by AMS that bid on contracts to supply the NSLP had a higher level of food...

This poster summarizes the parameter estimates from a hedonic pricing model of shell eggs.

In this paper, we empirically examine the relationship between food safety TPC on a country’s food exports to the United States using data for 2010. We developed a modified gravity model to account for the role TPC plays in facilitating international food trade. we found that a 10% increase in...

The European General Food Law of 2005 and the newly promulgated FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FFSMA) of 2010 ask all food operators to implement preventive efforts. In this article, we explore the link between firm’s size and preventive efforts. We show two main results. First, when there...