Winners and losers from food industry policy: An application to Danish food industry firms

Policy impacts on food industry firms are investigated. A new approach is presented for the analysis of food industry policies that focuses on food industry firms. Data from a survey of Danish firms in 2003-2004 are used to define and construct tables of winners and losers from 30 regulatory areas. Two forms of statistical test are employed in a grid-search to identify association between regulatory areas, types of firms, and patterns of winning and losing. Results indicate that the type of firm, rather than the policy instrument, determines patterns of winning and losing. Upstream and downstream ownership of assets by food industry firms, and their trade orientation, are shown to be the most important variables. For several policy areas the pattern of winning and losing is found not to be associated with any specific firm types, which indicates that their impact is neutral across all types of firms studied. Firm size was found to be poorly associated with firms' capacity to win and lose from several policies involving high-investment compliance.     

基于主成分分析法的广东省制造业竞争力研究

通过选取相关指标,利用主成分分析法分析了广东省28个制造业的竞争力状况,发现广东具有竞争优势的产业主要以医药化学工业、仪器仪表、电子信息产业、电气机械及器材制造业等资本、技术密集型产业为主;竞争力比较弱的产业主要是一些资源依赖性产业,比如黑色金属、有色金属等产业;重点扶持的汽车业、造船业和造纸业现阶段竞争力并不强,需要促进其竞争力提高。     

The impact of the 2008 financial crisis on dynamic productivity growth of the Spanish food manufacturing industry. An impulse response analysis

The emergence of a financial crisis is an event that can impact the fortunes of nearly all economic agents. The focus here is on the 2008 financial crisis and how firms’ productivity growth was impacted by this crisis in the years that followed. This article focuses on dynamic productivity growth and its components using a firm‐level data set of Spanish meat processing, dairy processing, and oils and fats firms. The impulse response analysis shows that the impact of the crisis on dynamic productivity growth is negative and persistent in the oils and fats industry, initially positive but then negative in the meat processing industry, and positive in the dairy processing industry. The observed magnitudes of change in indicator are between 2% and 5% for oils and fats industries, and of 1% in both dairy and meat industries. Our analysis further confirms that firms’ size is an important factor in explaining how crisis impacts dynamic productivity growth and its components, while we find only slight evidence regarding the firms’ experience in the market.     

食品安全背景下食品检测对食品产业发展的影响

本文对食品检测现状及其对产业发展的影响进行论述,并且提出食品安全大环境下食品产业的发展方向。     

Price transmission between products at different stages of manufacturing in forest industries

The theory of demand and supply implies a positive relationship, or “price transmission” between the prices of products at different stages of manufacturing. This relationship was investigated with quarterly prices of softwood stumpage in the US South, and national prices of forest products, from 1977 to 2002. All prices, net of inflation, were found to be nonstationary and there was no evidence of co-integration between prices. Vector autogressive models, augmented by Granger causality tests and multiplier analysis showed that there was a one-to-one permanent positive response of the southern sawtimber stumpage price to a permanent change in the national lumber price. There was also a one-third permanent positive response of the national paper price to a permanent change in the national pulp price. There was no relation between regional pulpwood prices and national pulp or paper prices. When price transmission was significant, the full adjustment took about 2 years.     

Structural change in urban Chinese food preferences

We undertake a range of tests for structural food preference change in urban China, using provincial‐level panel data from 2002 to 2010. We introduce a time transition function into the Generalized Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (GQAIDS) to represent consumer preferences. We apply this system to evaluate the demand structure for seven food groups. The use of the GQAIDS specification relaxes many empirical demand system restrictions associated with previous analyses of structural preference change. Our findings suggest that Chinese food preferences are continuing to evolve.     

Food safety issues and fresh food product exports from LDCs

Fresh food products have a high income elasticity of demand and few traditional trade barriers in high income markets. As such, they represent an important opportunity for less developed country (LDC) exporters. Fresh food product exports account for half of all food and agricultural exports from LDCs to high income countries. But these products may be subject to greater food safety risks and potential trade barriers arising from sanitary regulation. This paper reviews the challenges and issues facing LDCs in meeting food safety standards for export. These issues include: (a) the importance of fresh food product trade by region and the kinds of issues that arise from those products; (b) the role of farm to table approaches and hazard analysis critical control points (HACCP) in ensuring safety; (c) the role of the public sector in LDCs in facilitating trade; (d) the potential role of the SPS Agreement in resolving disputes and determining equivalency of standards between high and low income countries.     

Land fragmentation,climate change adaptation,and food security in the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia

Household food security among smallholder farmers is sensitive to a variable and changing climate, requiring farmers in the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia to adopt new land management practices to improve food security. Agricultural land in the Gamo Highlands is highly fragmented. The extent to which land fragmentation (LF) moderates the food security effects of sustainable land management (SLM) practices is unknown. This study used probit and Poisson models to explain this relationship. The study found that food insecurity was severe during the food shortfall season. LF provides more potential opportunities for improving food security than challenges. Furthermore, SLM practices had both positive and negative effects on food security and their effects were conditioned by the magnitude of LF. Reducing severe LF through the assembly of small parcels into larger heterogeneous plot clusters could enhance food security by exploiting synergies between adaptation practices and LF.     

Advertising and food, drink and tobacco consumption in the United Kingdom: a dynamic demand system

This paper tests for the influence of advertising on the inter‐product distribution of consumer demand for non‐durable goods and services in the UK, 1963–1996. The long‐run demand for seven categories of non‐durable products is modelled through an advertising‐augmented version of the almost ideal demand system (AIDS), which is incorporated into an error‐correction model to allow for short‐run dynamic adjustments to long‐run equilibrium positions. Model estimates confirm that the restrictions of price homogeneity and symmetry appear to be consistent with the data, yield measures of the various types of demand elasticity that are in general plausible, confirm the strong influence of prices on the allocation of consumer expenditure, but find little evidence to support the hypothesis that advertising has the power to effect marked changes in the inter‐product pattern of consumer demand in the UK.     

沿海地区高新技术产业评价研究

随着科技的高速发展和世界经济一体化、全球化不断推进,全球范围内国家、地区之间的竞争日益表现为知识生产领域、高新技术产业领域的竞争,高新技术产业在国民经济中所占的比重越来越大,高新技术及其产业已成为未来经济发展的重要推动力量。文章在构建高新技术产业评价的指标体系基础上,运用主成分分析、熵值、灰色关联分析和Kendall检验等方法建立了"三维一体"的联合决策理论测度模型,对我国沿海地区高新技术产业进行了测评和一致性检验,并提出了四条政策建议。     

分析辐射技术在食品加工中的应用

结合实际,以辐射技术为研究背景,在分析辐射加工行业的现状与未来发展趋势的基础上,论述了食品辐射加工的优点;同时对辐射技术在食品加工中的应用进行分析,希望可以给相关工作人员提供帮助。     

Urban agriculture could provide 15% of food supply to Sydney,Australia, under expanded land use scenarios

Urban agriculture (UA) can be highly productive in terms of yield per unit area, however productivity is limited by available land and high input requirements. We determined how much of the food supply of Sydney, Australia, could be produced through UA by synthesising yield data from 13 UA gardens with information on labour and key material inputs and using spatial analyses to assess available land area. We modelled three scenarios with varying proportions of available land used for food production; 25 %, 50 % or 75 % of domestic yard space along with street verges and unused land (e.g. vacant lots). Around 15 % of Sydney’s total food supply, or its entire vegetable supply, could be produced through UA under the low range scenario, increasing to 34 % under the highest land use scenario. Under the low range scenario, all necessary irrigation water and organic soil amendments could be obtained from local waste streams, though these sources were insufficient to meet the needs of higher range scenarios. Available labour was a limiting factor in all scenarios, with the entire population being insufficient to meet labour needs required to maintain food production under efficiency and labour investment regimes typical of amateur urban gardeners. Establishing a professionalised UA workforce with greater labour efficiency would be required for managing the available land, however this scenario would likely require changes in public attitudes towards use of private land. These social issues, rather than physical limitations, may be the biggest factors preventing cities like Sydney from obtaining a non-trivial proportion of their food supply from UA.     

Persistence of firm‐level profitability in the European dairy processing industry

Based on autoregressive (AR) models and Arellano‐Bond dynamic panel estimation, this article analyses profit persistence in the European dairy processing industry. The sample comprises 590 dairy processors from the following five countries: Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The AR models indicate that cooperatives which account for around 20% of all firms in the dairy processing sector are not primarily profit oriented. In addition, the results point toward a high level of competition as profit persistence is rather low even if cooperatives are excluded. The panel model reveals that short‐ as well as long‐run profit persistence is influenced by firm and industry characteristics.     

再生资源产业、环保产业与浙江丽水生态经济的关系

论述了再生资源产业、环保产业与丽水生态经济发展的关系：环保产业与再生资源产业是区域经济发展的统一体;再生资源产业是保护良好生态环境、保持区域经济快速发展的重要支撑;再生资源产业是生态优势持续的有力保障,更是丽水生态经济发展的特色路经;再生资源产业和环保产业殊途同归,助推和促进丽水生态经济发展。     

Regional productivity convergence: An analysis of the pulp and paper industries in U.S., Canada,Finland, and Sweden

In this paper we investigate the presence of productivity convergence in eight regional pulp and paper industries of U.S. and Canada over the period of 1971–2005. Expectation of productivity convergence in the pulp and paper industries of Canadian provinces and of the states of its southern neighbour is high since they are trading partners with fairly high level of exchanges in both pulp and paper products. Moreover, they share a common production technology that changed very little over the last century. We supplement the North-American regional data with national data for two Nordic countries, Finland and Sweden, which provides a scope to compare the productivity performances of four leading players in global pulp and paper industry. We find evidence in favour of the catch-up hypothesis among the regional pulp and paper industries of U.S. and Canada in our sample. The growth performance is at the advantage of Canadian provinces relative to their U.S. counterparts. The two Nordic countries, that had the lowest productivity levels in 1971, erased most of the gap and in some cases moved ahead of their North-American counterparts.