MODELING THE IMPACT OF FOOD SAFETY INFORMATION ON MEAT DEMAND IN SPAIN
No hay miniatura disponible
Fecha
Título de la revista
ISSN de la revista
Título del volumen
Editor
Resumen
Descripción
This paper analyses the impact of food safety information about the 'mad-cow' crisis on the
demand for different types of fresh meat and fish in Spain. The theoretical model explicitly
incorporates food safety information in the consumers' utility function, from which demand equations
are obtained. Two alternative functional forms have been considered, the standard AIDS and the
Generalized Almost ideal Demand System (GAIDS) in order to overcome the problem of incorporating
demand shifters in the traditional AIDS model. The food safety information has been incorporated into
the demand function through a weighted information index built on the basis of the published news
related to the mad-cow disease in the most popular Spanish newspaper. The comparison of elasticities
from both models suggests that GAIDS elasticities are more consistent with the characteristics of meat
and fish markets in Spain. Moreover, mass media information on BSE has had a statistically
significant but small effect on the consumption of the different meat products in Spain.