Implementing dietary guidelines: a task for all involved in food supply

The diet typical of countries such as Britain has been identified as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and other conditions. Dietary guidelines have been published setting out changes to the nutritional content of the diet. Foods reach the consumer as a result of a complex system involving primary production, basic processing, manufacture, retailing and catering. Achievement of the guidelines can be facilitated or hampered by action taken at each of these stages. The author illustrates this by examples taken from each stage citing instances of good practice and areas with potential for improvement. However, the paper points out that the best efforts of those supplying foods can be undermined by inappropriate action by consumers and concludes that a concerted effort to implement dietary guidelines must involve everyone concerned with the supply and consumption of food with the support of various government agencies.     

THE TEMPORAL CAUSALITY BETWEEN FISCAL DEFICITS AND INTEREST RATES

Conventional wisdom suggests that higher government fiscal deficits cause higher (long-term) interest rates. Much empirical work—generally standard ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis—has examined this issue and has produced mixed findings. Even if these standard OLS studies conclude that deficits and interest rates are related, they do not answer the question of which came first—the higher deficit or the higher interest rate? A few studies have used Granger causality to consider the question of temporal causality, generally with short-term interest rates. Tliis paper employs the relatively new cointegration and error-correction methodology to reexamine the temporal causality between fiscal deficits and interest rates—both long term and short term. This study finds evidence that federal deficits cause the long-term interest rate.     

TAX DISCOUNTING VS. CROWDING OUT

The “crowding out” effect of debt-financed government spending on the private sector consumption-saving decision and on private investment behavior has been a controversial subject for several years. Do increases in debt-financed government spending stimulate private consumption and saving in the short run, as well as private consumption in subsequent periods? Or does the realization that future taxes must be raised to finance repayment of the debt result in a lack of stimulus for consumption as well as no detrimental impact on subsequent private saving? This article empirically tests for the presence and/or magnitude of tax discounting and crowding out, carefully distinguishing between the two, and decomposes government debt instruments according to their maturities in order to determine impact due to a reorientation of debt structure. The results do not support the existence of tax discounting, suggesting instead that government deficits do stimulate current consumption.     

THE VALUE OF TIGER SHARK DIVING WITHIN THE ALIWAL SHOAL MARINE PROTECTED AREA: A TRAVEL COST ANALYSIS

Using on‐site survey data collected via the administration of a questionnaire to 197 respondents during the period stretching from January 2007 to December 2007 from the Aliwal Shoal Marine Protected Area, this study estimates and compares an ordinary least squares and two Poisson count data models of recreational tiger shark diving demand. The Poisson model corrected for endogenous stratification and truncation provided the best results. It was concluded that in 2007, the consumer surplus per person per tiger shark dive was R1,136, and the total consumer surplus per annum was R2,080,925.     

Investment Decisions for Retirement Savings

We conducted a choice experiment to investigate whether retirement savers follow simple portfolio theory when choosing investments. We modeled experimental survey data on 693 participants using a scale-adjusted version of the latent class choice model. Results show that underlying variability in response was explained by age and “risk profile” score and that preferences varied with income and age. Younger individuals were conventionally risk averse, but older, higher-income individuals may react positively to both higher returns and increasing risk, when risk is presented as widening ranges of possible outcomes. Respondents tended to choose among a few similar investment options.     

The Politics of International Assessments: The IAASTD Process,Reception and Significance

This paper explores the career of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology and Development (IAASTD) from its inception, the publishing of its reports, and its place in ongoing debates on global agriculture, food security, poverty reduction, social equity and sustainable development. We highlight the disputes and disruptions that characterize the IAASTD process and attempts to marginalize its findings. Following a brief review of the history of the Assessment and of the social construction of scientific knowledges, we consider five processes that expose the hierarchies and contestations that shape ongoing debates. We reveal how conflicts within IAASTD and between IAASTD and its sponsors cannot be dismissed as either technical or managerial, but instead showcase the fragility of claims that privilege productivity increases over other relations in agricultural practice. We conclude with a challenge to understanding agricultural change and its future that builds on social, ecological and political relations as constitutive rather than as exogenous to research and policy formation.