Future images of meat consumption in 2030

The issue of meat consumption has been a subject of interest that has been looked at from environmental, animal and human perspectives. This paper contributes to the discussion by clarifying the diversity of views with regard to the future of meat consumption. Two round Delphi expert interviews and a consumer survey were conducted in order to collect information. Five coherent future images were constructed: Traditional Approach, Business as Usual, Humans First, Wellness and Vegetarian Society. The discussion part of the paper presents possible ways of influencing meat consumption according to the holders of these different images of the future.     

Land reforms and population growth

One of the greatest puzzles in demographic history is why in the rich and urbanized England, fertility declined much later than in the poor and rural France. We consider the effects of a land reform on demographic growth by a family-optimization model where relative per capita wealth generates social status and welfare. We show that tenant farming is the major obstacle to escaping the Malthusian trap with high fertility and low productivity. A land reform provides peasants with higher returns for their investments, inducing them to increase their productivity and status rather than their family size. Consequently, the population growth rate slows down, but the productivity of land increases.     

Investment, expropriation, and unionization

In this paper, I examine an economy where output is produced from labor, capital and public services, and where firms and labor unions bargain over labor conditions and lobby the government over union bargaining power and public services. I compare three institutional cases: (a) competitive wage settlement, (b) bargaining over wages and employment, and (c) bargaining over wages only. I show that in cases (a) and (b) the government expropriates investment rents, but right-to-manage bargaining (c) protects investors from this expropriation.