Does food security matter for transition in Arab countries?

Expectations are high that transition in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen will bring about more freedom, justice, and economic opportunities. However, experiences from other world regions show that countries in transition are at high risk of entering conflicts, which often come at large economic, social and political costs. In order to identify options on how conflict may be prevented in Arab transition countries, this paper assesses the key global drivers of conflicts based on a dataset from 1960 to 2010 and improved cross-country regression techniques. Results show that unlike in other studies where per capita incomes, inequality, and poor governance, among other factors, emerge as the major determinants of conflict, food security at macro and household-levels emerges as the main cause of conflicts in the Arab World. The high exposure of Arab countries to global food price variations proves to be an important source of vulnerability for a peaceful Arab transition. If history is also a guide to the future, improving food security is not only important for improving the lives of rural and urban people; it is also likely to be the key for a peaceful transition. The paper concludes with a set of policy options on how to improve food security at macro and household-levels, including safeguard mechanisms against excessive price volatility, export-led and pro-poor growth, the creation/expansion of social safety nets and targeted nutrition programs.     

Do ICTs drive wealth inequality? Evidence from a dynamic panel analysis

Surprisingly, little is known about the cross-country effect of information and communication technology (ICT) on wealth inequality. At the same time, there is some tentative evidence suggesting that information and communication technology is positively correlated with income inequality. However, whether and how ICT affects wealth inequality is less explored, particularly because of the lack of reliable data on wealth inequality. This paper, therefore, fills this gap and contributes to this new literature by investigating the effect of ICT on wealth inequality in a sample of 45 developed and developing countries over the period 2000–2017. ICT is measured with six different indicators (including internet penetration, mobile penetration, ICT service exports, the ICT index, ICT quality, and ICT quantity), while wealth inequality is measured with three different indicators (comprising billionaire wealth to GDP, the Top 1% wealth share, and the Top 10% wealth share). The empirical analysis is based on the Generalised Method of Moments, and the results show that ICT increases wealth inequality. Furthermore, we show that democracy mitigates the increasing effect of ICT on wealth inequality. This result suggests that improving democracy in both developed and developing countries is an effective mechanism for mitigating the effects of ICT on wealth inequality. Therefore, we encourage efforts to implement democratic institutions that ensure respect for citizens' freedoms, greater democratic accountability, and executive constraints that allow for a more egalitarian distribution of wealth.     

Does nutrition information on food products lead to healthier food choices?

This paper examines the link between nutrition label use and consumers’ healthier food choices. Label use is considered for the two main types of labels currently found on food products; nutrition facts panels and nutrition/health claims. This link is tested using a three-equation multivariate probit model. Data were obtained from an ad hoc survey conducted in two medium-sized Spanish cities. The results indicate that the use of nutrition information by consumers, whether this involves the fact panel or the claim labels, does influence consumer choice of healthier food products to the same extent, although different types of consumers use the various types of labels considered.     

Does bridging the Internet Access Divide contribute to enhancing countries' integration into the global trade in services markets?

This paper examines the impact of countries' distance between their Internet usage and the world' average of the Internet usage intensity on their integration into the world market of trade in commercial services. Using an unbalanced panel dataset of 175 countries over the annual period 2000–2013, the empirical analysis indicates that the narrowing of the Internet-related distance would improve countries' integration into the world trade in commercial services market. Furthermore, it helps those countries that are geographically far from the world market to compensate for the adverse effect of this geographical distance on their integration into the world market of trade in commercial services.     

Does inflation kill? Exposure to food inflation and child mortality

Unlike extreme malnutrition shocks, such as famine and drought which grab the attention of the media, international aid organizations and policymakers, malnutrition due to food price hikes are often neglected and their impacts on children are not well known. It is well established that malnutrition during the critical periods of early life – between conception and the first 1000 days after birth – has lasting consequences on health and mortality. In this paper, using a uniquely constructed data from Ethiopia that takes advantage of high-frequency local retail food prices, we examine the impact of early life exposure to food price inflation on child mortality. Following survival events since conception, we estimate the causal impact of exposure to inflation during in-utero and infancy. The results show that exposure to a 10 percent inflation in staple food prices during in-utero decreases the survival of children under the age of five by about 5.4 percent. We also find that the impacts are non-linear depending on the specific month of exposure and substantially vary by observable characteristics and the type of staple food.     

Do markets and trade help or hurt the global food system adapt to climate change?

Rapidly expanding global trade in the past three decades has lifted millions out of people out of poverty. Trade has also reduced manufacturing wages in high income countries and made entire industries uncompetitive in some communities, giving rise to nationalist politics that seek to stop or reverse further trade expansion in the United States and Europe. Given complex and uncertain political support for trade, how might changes in trade policy affect the global food system’s ability to adapt to climate change? Here we argue that we can best understand food security in a changing climate as a double exposure: the exposure of people and processes to both economic and climate-related shocks and stressors. Trade can help us adapt to climate change, or not. If trade restrictions proliferate, double exposure to both a rapidly changing climate and volatile markets will likely jeopardize the food security of millions. A changing climate will present both opportunities and challenges for the global food system, and adapting to its many impacts will affect food availability, food access, food utilization and food security stability for the poorest people across the world. Global trade can continue to play a central role in assuring that global food system adapts to a changing climate. This potential will only be realized, however, if trade is managed in ways that maximize the benefits of broadened access to new markets while minimizing the risks of increased exposure to international competition and market volatility. For regions like Africa, for example, enhanced transportation networks combined with greater national reserves of cash and enhanced social safety nets could reduce the impact of ‘double exposure’ on food security.     

Does female representation in top management improve firm performance? A panel data investigation

We argue that female representation in top management brings informational and social diversity benefits to the top management team, enriches the behaviors exhibited by managers throughout the firm, and motivates women in middle management. The result should be improved managerial task performance and thus better firm performance. We test our theory using 15 years of panel data on the top management teams of the S&P 1,500 firms. We find that female representation in top management improves firm performance but only to the extent that a firm's strategy is focused on innovation, in which context the informational and social benefits of gender diversity and the behaviors associated with women in management are likely to be especially important for managerial task performance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relative price changes as a tool to stimulate more healthy food choices – A Danish household panel study

The increased prevalence of lifestyle-related illnesses particularly in western countries calls for public action. A poor diet is a key explanatory factor to this development. Previous research has addressed the problem of unhealthy food consumption behavior by looking at how taxes may function as an instrument to change purchase behavior from less healthy products to healthier ones. In this paper we address this issue by looking at the effects of discounts depending on whether healthy or less healthy products are available at a discount. Our study is based on weekly purchase data from a Danish household panel for the period 2010–2011. Interestingly, from a public health perspective our findings suggest that there is an asymmetric effect of discounts depending on the fat content of the product. Furthermore, our results point at two classes of consumers where the asymmetric effects go in different directions.     

Public Private Partnerships in food industries: A road to success?

Recent food safety crises have led to the development of new collaborations between public authorities and food operators in monitoring food safety. To date, most of the literature has analyzed these collaborations as linked to a regulatory process and as a mean to comply with regulatory standards. In this paper, we take another stand and consider them as specific embedded institutions (meso-institutions) analysing them as Public Private Partnership specific to food safety provision. This new perspective allows us to take into account both information asymmetries and the industry-wide dimension of such programmes. Our overall intention is to provide a general enriched theoretical framework to highlight aligned incentive mechanisms in such partnerships. We then apply our framework to two case studies in order to better understand the main mechanisms at work that could explain their specific functioning and resilience. The two case studies are the cattle traceability system in Quebec (Canada) and monitoring programmes for pesticide residues in the French imports industry of fresh produce.     

Fit for purpose? Rethinking food security responses in protracted humanitarian crises

The recent rise in the price of food worldwide defied easy categorization. However, the impact of the price hikes on developing country consumption served to refocus attention on food security. Much attention was paid to short-term buffering of nutrition in tandem with new investments in agriculture – a dual approach that served to reinforce a longstanding bifurcation in analysis and programming between “emergency” and “development” categories, suggesting that “emergency” responses deal with immediate needs while “development” means addressing underlying causes with a longer-term lens. The notion of the “relief to development continuum” has long been dismissed as conceptual framework, but has never really been replaced as a programmatic framework. This paper suggests a multi-dimensional way of conceiving of these categories and a more systematic way of thinking about response. Ethiopia is noted as an example where elements of this new approach are taking shape but even Ethiopia has not adopted all of these components in an integrated way, and the programming there has not been comprehensively evaluated.     

Does agricultural trade affect productivity? Evidence from Chilean farms

This paper analyzes the relationship between trade and agricultural productivity in Chile, a middle-income country with a recent noticeable history of agricultural trade. This study uses an agricultural commodity trade exposure index in a cross-sectional analysis of more than 70,000 farms to study the relationship between the trade exposure of agricultural commodities and the yields reported by these farms in the 1997 Chilean agricultural census. In order to capture both import and export exposure we subdivide farms in two groups, according to the Chilean case: farms producing only importables such as grains (traditional crops), and farms producing both traditional crops and non-traditional agricultural commodities (products more related to export markets). We exclude from our analysis farms producing only non-traditional products because the census only reports yields for traditional crops. We employ a switching regression model to analyze the effects of trade exposure on traditional crop yields for both groups of farms. Results show that the trade exposure index is positively related to farm yields for both groups, but with a larger effect on farmers producing both traditional and non-traditional commodities. These results are important because they suggest that spillovers from both importables and exportables produce gains in the productivity of traditional crops.     

Does importer involvement contribute to product innovation? The role of export market factors and intra-firm coordination

Relying on insights from resource dependence and information processing theory, this study analyzes the extent to which an importer's involvement influences product innovation at the industrial exporter firm. We consider two modes of involvement, collecting importer's feedback and importer integration in the product development effort. We propose that the relationship between importer involvement and product innovation is contingent upon the level of inter-functional coordination within the development firm, and contextual factors related to the export market. Data were collected from export companies participating in different international business-to-business markets. Results show that firms with high inter-functional coordination achieved higher leverage from importer feedback, but obtain no impact from importer integration in product development (PD). Contextual factors affect the relationship between importer involvement and product innovation: importer feedback affects product innovation in environments with intense competition and low technological turbulence. Importer integration in PD has a significant effect on product innovation in environments with low competitive intensity and high technological turbulence. This study contributes to a better understanding of the conditions that allow an exporter firm to create value through external relationships. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

Is the internet penetration pro-poor? Evidence from a panel data analysis

The impacts of internet use on income and poverty status are contentious despite extensive research efforts. This paper re-examines these influences using five-wave panel data extracted from the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS). A two-step system called Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) is the primary metric for estimating internet-income and internet-poverty correlations. The analysis revealed that internet use assisted rural households, including the poor ones, in fostering their livelihoods in the 2008–2016 period: (1) internet access increased the average annual household income per capita by 4.5 million Vietnamese dongs, accounting for at least 17% of the overall income; (2) it decreased the probability of being poor by around 4%. This study suggests that the universalisation of the internet, along with improvements in digital literacy and digital applications provided for rural dwellers, particularly the needy, should be essential for poverty reduction programmes in the context of developing countries.     

China׳s information security standardization: Analysis from the perspective of technical barriers to trade principles

There have been many attempts for ICT standardization in China. Among them, this paper deals with information security standards. Although information security is often mentioned regarding China?s ICT standardization, it has been rarely examined per se. While most studies on China?s ICT standardization focus on economic aspects (e.g. increased bargaining power) or the government?s role, this paper draws on legal aspects. We select WAPI and ZUC for case studies, and examine their legal aspects, particularly from the perspective of WTO?s TBT (technical barriers to trade) principles. We have found that China?s standardization strategy becomes international-bound and, in fact, the manner in which the Chinese government handles standardization projects has become refined, flexible, and communicative with foreign stakeholders. We see that the changes are responses to the trade concerns raised by foreign stakeholders in various TBT Committee meetings and bilateral meetings. In addition, the Chinese government appears to become market-oriented even in the field of information security where it previously maintained a rigid stance on the ground of national security. This paper points out that the changes are attributed to growing external pressure from foreign governments and firms as well as to internal efforts toward innovation based on indigenous technology.     

Does innovation stimulate employment? A firm-level analysis using comparable micro-data from four European countries

We study the impact of process and product innovations introduced by firms on employment growth with random samples of manufacturing and services from France, Germany, Spain and the UK for 1998–2000, totaling about 20,000 companies. We develop and estimate a model relating firms' and industry's employment to innovation, that leads us to the conclusions that follow. Trend increases in productivity reinforced by process innovation are an important source of reduction of employment requirements for a given output, but the growth of demand for the old products tends to overcompensate these displacement effects. The switch of production towards new products does not reduce employment requirements, and the growth of the demand for the new products is the strongest force behind employment creation. Reallocation due to business stealing is estimated at a maximum of one third of the net employment created by product innovators. The growth of employment originated from the market expansion induced by the new products can be as important as another third.     

Does it Pay to be Flexible?

This paper addresses the determinants of price-cost margins inU.S. 4-digit industries. Margins are larger in capital intensive andconcentrated industries with high growth rates and R & D andadvertising to sales ratios. They also fluctuate significantly overthe business cycle. We go beyond the existing literature byconsidering an issue which is a dominant topic in the businessliterature, the flexibility of firms to adjust to exogenous shocks.In particular, we find a significant positive relationship betweenthe flexibility of labour demand and price cost marginssuggesting that it pays to be flexible.     

Trading off nutrition and education? A panel data analysis of the dissimilar welfare effects of Organic and Fairtrade standards

Millions of smallholder farmers in developing countries participate in different types of sustainability standards. A growing body of literature has analyzed the welfare effects, with mixed results. Yet, there are important knowledge gaps. First, most existing studies have looked at the effects of one standard in one country. When comparing between studies it is unclear whether dissimilar outcomes are the result of different standards or different local conditions. Second, most studies have used cross-section data, so that selectivity issues remain a challenge. Third, existing work has primarily analyzed effects in terms of purely economic indicators, such as prices and income, ignoring other dimensions of household welfare. We address these shortcomings using panel data from small-scale coffee producers in Uganda and comparing the effects of two of the most popular sustainability standards, namely Organic and Fairtrade. Welfare effects are analyzed in terms of household expenditures, child education, and nutrition. Results show that Organic and Fairtrade both have positive effects on total consumption expenditures. However, notable differences are observed in terms of the other outcomes. Organic contributes to improved nutrition but has no effect on education. For Fairtrade it is exactly the other way around. We explore the mechanisms behind these differences.     

Export behavior of Italian food firms: Does product quality matter?

Using firm-level data we investigate the export behavior of Italian food firms, focusing on the link between total factor productivity (TFP), product quality, and export across heterogeneous destinations. We test the main predictions of an international trade model based on firm heterogeneity in product quality and non-homothetic preferences in consumption. In this setting, the firm’s export intensity should be increasing in the per-capita income of foreign destinations, and the effect should be largely driven by firms’ heterogeneity in product quality. Using different measures of revenue-TFP, and different proxies for product quality, we find strong support for the main model predictions. Moreover, consistent with the Alchian–Allen effect, we find a positive relationship between the quality of exported products and the distance of destination countries.     

Does product market competition foster corporate social responsibility? Evidence from trade liberalization

This study examines whether product market competition affects corporate social responsibility (CSR). To obtain exogenous variation in product market competition, I exploit a quasi‐natural experiment provided by large import tariff reductions that occurred between 1992 and 2005 in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Using a difference‐in‐differences methodology, I find that domestic companies respond to tariff reductions by increasing their engagement in CSR. This finding supports the view of “CSR as a competitive strategy” that allows companies to differentiate themselves from their foreign rivals. Overall, my results highlight that trade liberalization is an important factor that shapes CSR practices. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does agricultural trade liberalization increase risks of supply-side uncertainty?: Effects of productivity shocks and export restrictions on welfare and food supply in Japan

Agriculture is the focus of much contention in free trade negotiations. The Japanese government is against liberalizing the rice trade on the grounds that it would threaten “national food security” in the events of such shocks as crop failure and embargoes. Trade liberalization is expected to make the Japanese economy more dependent upon food imports and, thus, more susceptible to these risks. Using a computable general equilibrium model with a Monte Carlo simulation, we quantify the welfare impacts of productivity shocks and export quotas by major rice exporters to Japan and found little evidence of Japan suffering from such shocks.