In this paper we develop a new methodological proposal to incorporate risk into a farm level Positive Mathematical Programming (PMP) model. Our model presents some innovations with respect to the previous literature and estimates simultaneously the resource shadow prices, the farm non-linear...

In spite of Italy presenting one of the largest consumption of fruits and vegetables (FV) among EU Countries, the number of adult Italians consuming the recommended daily amounts of FV is declining, especially in the South of the country, were the expansion of the food retail industry has been...

In this paper we assess the impact of the LD 114/1998 on the structure of the Italian food retailing industry. We use difference–in–difference technique, comparing the level of concentration, number of stores, average store size and level of service offered to consumers in regions enacting...

In recent years food manufacturers have been devoting a large portion of their R&D budget to the development off functional foods, as a competitive strategy within food demand markets; on the other hand, consumers, despite functional foods exhibit a significant level of information asymmetry,...

The paper reviews the econometric models used in the past 10 years to analyse the most widely used agricultural policy instruments. The main aim of the paper is to provide the reader with an overview of these models, analysing the technical solutions adopted, the type of results that can be...

A test for convergence in food tastes based on the estimation of a time-varying-parameter demand system is proposed; the test uses a notion of convergence in time series that looks at equality in the long-term forecasts of parameter estimates through cointegration techniques. An empirical...

Econometric models wishing to estimate relevant parameters for agricultural policy analysis are increasingly relying on unbalanced panels of farm-level data. Since in the agricultural economics literature such models have often been estimated through simplified approaches, in this paper we try...

The hypothesis of direct weak separability of the transformation function places fewer restrictions on production technology than those deriving from alternative multistage procedures based on indirect separability assumptions. We derive an explicit form of the necessary and sufficient...

When lump-sum taxation is not feasible, decoupled transfers to farmers (which require raising government revenue) will entail welfare loss somewhere in the economy. Assuming the government's objective is to assure a given welfare level for farmers, we show that when decoupling is possible, free...

Mycotoxins contamination in food is a serious source of health risks. This paper evaluates the Italian consumers’ perception of the mycotoxins’ risk through their willingness to pay (WTP) for a hypothetical bottle of milk obtained by cows fed with, inter alia, maize certified for...