Consumer inability to make healthy food choices and to maintain a balanced diet is one of the main determinants that can explain the growth of overweight and obesity. Many studies have focused on the different factors affecting food behaviour, but only few of these have considered the role of...

The paper aims at analysing rice-price volatility over the last five years, and at identifying strengths and weaknesses of financial-risk management tools other than derivatives. In particular, it focuses on innovative insurance products and on their potential use in the EU Mediterranean area,...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the competitive performance of different European countries at sector level in the intra-EU market from 1995 to 2011, comparing food industry and agricultural sector. In particular, we aim to assess the effect of the EU enlargement (first period) and the...

In this paper we analyse if there is a diffuesed interest among consumers about the environmental impacts of their food choices, and try to capture the different types of attitudes of Italian consumers with respect to environmental sustainability of food products. The analysis builds on a survey...

The objective of the study is to analyze if there is a relationship between health and environmental sustainability concerns in food choices. We used data of 300 Italian consumers collected through a <i>vis-à-vis</i> survey. We performed cross-tabulations and chi-square tests for a selected set of...

The paper presents a model for integrated sustainability assessment at a farm scale. The SOSTARE model (analysis of farm technical efficiency and impacts on environmental and economic sustainability), in fact, aims at providing a diagnostic tool to farmers and advisory services to assess the...

Diet-related chronic diseases, such as overweight and obesity, are worrisome not only from a medical point of view, but also in terms of monetary expenditures, these health problems are strictly linked to sizeable sanitary costs (Chou et al., 2004; Yaniv et al., 2009; Cawley and Meyerhoefer, 2012; Ruhm,...

In the last years European farmers have been facing two new phenomena: the asymmetric price transmission in agro-food sector and the decrease of agricultural value added. The European Commission denounced low transparency in trade relationships and frequent unfair commercial practices between...

This article highlights the interaction between social capital, pooling and quality premiums and their influence on cooperative members’ decisions regarding their product quality. A necessary condition for cooperative equitable principles such as complete pooling is that there exists a high...

In agro-food enterprises from Romania, management of risk control is seen as a dynamic process that, in order to work involves a cycle that incorporates risk identification, assessment, administering and verification. Risk management is closely related to the performance management, so that it...