Food Fraud and Risk Perception: Awareness in Canada and Projected Trust on Risk-Mitigating Agents

During the past few years, food fraud has become a source of concern for consumers in many parts of the world. Major cases of food fraud have been found in Canada in recent months, including the Mucci case, in which Mexican tomatoes were sold as Canadian, as well as the case of a poultry farmer selling nonorganic chicken as organic. The authors aim to assess the level of awareness and trust among Canadian consumers in relation to fraudulent and counterfeit food products. This exploratory study is meant to establish latent determinants on consumers’ risk perception of food fraud in general. These determinants include education, income, geographical region, age, sex, and health-related predisposition such as food allergies and intolerances. To this end, a random survey was conducted across Canada in January 2017. A sample size of 1088 was used for this study. Findings indicate that older, more-educated consumers generally feel more vulnerable, to various degrees, than do other consumers. Consumers who are aware and have experienced food fraud previously are likely to trust other consumers as risk-mitigating agents more so than public regulators or industry. Several limitations are presented, and future research paths are suggested.     

Fragmented Food Habits and the Disintegration of Traditional Meal Patterns: A Challenge to Public Health Nutrition in Canada?

Abstract

This study examines the shifting patterns in meal consumption practices among Canadians and the sources of disruption of meal habits. It analyses the notion of breakfast, lunch, dinner, out-of-household consumption of food, cooking, and snacking which could be considered as disrupting eating habits. Meal skipping, primarily breakfast and lunch was common, particularly among women, as was consumption of food outside the home, particularly among lower income earners and respondents with lower education attainment. The findings of this survey suggest that contemporary Canadians are experiencing a disruption of meal times, a rise in the frequency of snacking and an erosion of the will or ability to prepare or cook meals at home. For many Canadians, the traditional notion of three-meals a day is becoming an ideal, rather than a daily reality. Fragmented food habits and the disintegration of traditional meal patterns represent a challenge to public health nutrition in Canada.     

Political dimensions of environmental conflicts in Kosi Bay,South Africa: significance of the new post-apartheid governance system

The new demarcation of land in Kosi Bay, aimed at reversing the spatial legacy of apartheid, has resulted in competition and new environmental conflicts between political structures, conservation authorities and local communities. The current complex governance framework is attempting to overcome the problems created by the political structures of the apartheid era, during which time the declaration of natural areas for conservation resulted in forced removals and negative perceptions of conservation. The case study of Kosi Bay, a strategic area for tourism development, is a typical example of various confrontations that reflect the history of the past and the rivalries of the present.     

The roles of reputation and transparency on the behavior of biased experts

We analyze situations in which an expert is biased toward some decision but cares also about his reputation in the market for experts. The information the expert reveals decreases as his bias moves toward stronger preferences for the status quo. Surprisingly, revealing the intensity of the expert’s bias does not always improve the information he reveals in equilibrium. The presence of a second expert raises the first expert’s incentives to report truthfully when the market can identify the contribution of each expert, but reduces them when only the collective contribution is identified by the market.     

The erosion of jurisdiction: Auditing in a market value accounting regime

In recent years, accounting standards worldwide have been modified so as to render them more heavily based on fair or market value. This paper explores the behavioural and jurisdictional consequences of the normative drift towards fair value. Being informed by Giddens’ work on late modernity, trust and expertise and drawing on a series of interviews with Canadian professional accountants, we argue that fair value accounting makes it increasingly harder for auditors to feel and actually be in control of their own expertise. That is, auditors’ system of expertise is now considerably more reliant on a “secondary” – but perhaps in actual fact primary – layer of expertise revolving around market valuation techniques and principles. In so doing, the auditors’ job is increasingly transformed as the involvement of valuators now represents a recurrent and pervasive phenomenon in audit processes. The auditor's role nowadays resembles that of an arbiter having to mediate discrepancies over subjective values – a number of which being produced by highly specialized valuators. Important implications ensue from a system of expertise in which the experts’ degree of control over their own jurisdictional work is increasingly eroding.     

Do ESG Controversies Matter for Firm Value? Evidence from International Data

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) controversies and firm market value. We use a unique dataset of more than 4000 firms from 58 countries during 2002–2011. Primary analysis surprisingly shows that ESG controversies are associated with greater firm value. However, when interacted with the corporate social performance (CSP) score, ESG controversies are found to have no direct effect on firm value while the interaction appears to be highly and significantly positive. Building on this evidence, we attempt to explore the channels through which CSP may enhance market value. Conducting sample split analysis indicates that higher CSP score has an impact on market value only for high-attention firms, those firms which are larger, perform better, located in countries with greater press freedom, more searched on the Internet, more followed by analysts, and have an improved corporate social reputation. Thus, our findings provide new insights on the role of firm visibility through which firms can profit from their CSP.     

Self-fulfilling expectations and the inflation of the 1970s: Evidence from the Livingston Survey

Using survey data on expectations, we examine whether the response of monetary policy to sudden movements in expected inflation contributed to the persistent high inflation of the 1970s. The evidence suggests that, prior to 1979, the Fed accommodated temporary shocks to expected inflation, which then led to persistent increases in actual inflation. We do not find this behavior in the post-1979 data. Among commonly cited factors, oil and fiscal shocks do not appear to have triggered an increase in expected inflation that eventually resulted in higher actual inflation.     

Financial statement users’ institutional logic

In this paper, we investigate what we call “financial statement users’ institutional logic,” defined as users’ expressed fundamental views and beliefs about accounting information. We analyze users’ comment letters to standard setters in response to the proposed standards on lease accounting to identify the dimensions of the institutional logic that underlie their views on accounting information. Our qualitative analysis identified and validated ten principal dimensions, namely economics and substance, due process issues, measurement, readiness and relevance for use, conceptual foundations, clarity, presentation and disclosure, cost-benefit issues, comparability and consistency, and financial statement manipulation. Quantitative analyses revealed that four of these dimensions, i.e. due process issues, readiness and relevance for use, comparability and consistency, and cost-benefit issues, occupy a medium or large amount of space in users’ comments and are referred to in strong terms, while economics and substance and measurement, although also widely discussed, are addressed in weaker terms. Overall, our study begins to fill a gap in the literature by providing insights into users’ views on accounting information. These insights challenge the “homo economicus user” currently constructed in standard-setting debates.