McDonald's Corporation, one of the largest buyers of meat in the U.S. fast-food industry, recently adopted a policy that prohibits its direct suppliers from using medically important antibiotics as growth promotants in food animals after 2004. Although the implications of such a voluntary ban in...

The modern theory of demand which underlies much of economic analysis of consumer behavior is based on the premise that consumption goods are pure and do not involve risks. However, that is clearly not the case where concerns about food safety are involved. The awareness of linkages between...

While one of the main agricultural policy objectives of formerly planned economies is the maximization of agricultural output under a variety of domestic and international constraints, the current changes in incentive structures may be having a mitigating impact on environmental degradation....

In this paper, the authors examine welfare participation dynamics in Iowa from 1993 to 1996, the initial years of Iowa's welfare reform. Analyses of participation in the Family Investment Program (FIP) during its first two years show that, on average, FIP recipients stayed fewer months in the...

Current concerns over links between diet and health, the safety of food, and developing effective nutrition education and food assistance programs have placed increasing demands on federal data collection and methods of monitoring the food supply. Design of effective food and nutrition policies,...

The double-hurdle and infrequency-of-purchase models are applied to pork and cheese consumption using the 1987-88 Nationwide Food Consumption Survey data. Own-price effects on the probability and level of consumption are negative and significant for both pork and cheese, while income and...

Economic and welfare program factors affect the well-being of low-income families and their labor supply decisions. This study uses data from the U.S. Survey of Income and Program Participation. A nested logit model is estimated to explain the joint decisions to participate in Temporary...

The development of policies and regulations to address food safety concerns depends critically on appropriate assessment of health risk in foods. This paper evaluates the methods for assessing the population's exposure to a hazardous substance or contaminant in food and some aspects of the...

Current policies designed to improve food safety rely on regulation and market incentives. However, the mix of both private and public incentives to improve food safety and the dynamics of industry response to regulation make analysis of the costs of food safety complex. The paper provides an...

The Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations is deadlocked on the issue of agricultural policy reform. Although broad consensus has been reached regarding replacing all nontariff trade barriers with "equivalent tariffs," agreement on the questions of...