Animal foods and climate change: shadowing eating practices

Animal farming exceeds all forms of transport in terms of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Despite the implications of the seriousness of addressing animal farming in relation to mitigating the effects of GHG emissions, to date, the relationship between consumer behaviour and climate change has tended to neglect the role of animal foods. This paper reports on a pilot study in which six UK households were ‘shadowed’ to facilitate the investigation of the relationship between animal food practices and environmental practices, as they emerge in day‐to‐day life. Results indicate that most participants make no connection between the two issues at present, in terms of awareness or practice. However, animal foods do have an ambiguous and complex status in most participants' food practices; for instance, being viewed as problematic for reasons of health or animal welfare. This finding suggests that further research is needed into the potential for raising awareness of the link between animal‐based foods and climate change. This might have a role to play in shifting food practices towards more plant‐based, less GHG intensive, foods.     

Monetary regimes and money supply endogeneity

Quasi-longitudinal Canadian microdata was used to compare the movement of individuals between employers with job changes taking place within firms. Internal mobility is found to be much less common than job changing between firms. Workers changing jobs within a firm are more likely to be older and have higher wages and longer tenures in the jobs they leave than individuals employers. This provides some support for the job-matching hypothesis underlying recent research on the causes of individual mobility, although it is also clear that workers in large or unionized firms are more likely to have the opportunity for internal promotion. While wage gains obtained through internal mobility are smaller than those achieved through external mobility, wage levels are higher for individuals moving within the firm. It is argued that this observation is consistent with a dual labour markets interpretation of mobility patterns.     

THE INFLATIONARY IMPACT OF OIL PRICE SHOCKS: A VECTOR AUTOREGRESSIVE STUDY

The paper estimates a seven-variable vector autoregressive model of the U.S. economy over the period 1970.1 to 1990.4. Forecast error variance and impulse analysis are performed on the estimated system to determine the inflationary impact of increases in the price of oil over this period. The analysis shows that a negligible percentage of inflation's forecast error variance can be attributable to increases in the price of oil. Moreover, the impulse simulations result in negative Consumer Price responses to increases in the price of oil. The primary response to a positive shock in the price of oil was a decrease in real output. The results, in general, support previous studies emphasizing the demand-side of response to oil price shocks rather than shifts in aggregate supply.