A Little Bird Told Me... Nutri-Score Panoramas from a Flight over Europe, Connecting Science and Society

Within the Farm to Fork Strategy, the European Commission ask for a unified Front Of Pack nutritional label for food to be used at the European level. The scientific debate identified the Nutri-Score (NS) as the most promising candidate, but within the political discussion, some Member States brought to attention several issues related to its introduction. This misalignment led to a postponement of the final decision. With the aim to shed some light on the current stances and contribute to the forthcoming debate, the objective of the present work is to understand to what extent scientific research addresses the issues raised by the general public. We applied a structural topic model to tweets from four European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain) and to abstracts of scientific papers, all dealing with the NS topic. Different aspects of the NS debate are discussed in different countries, but scientific research, while addressing some of them (e.g., the comparison between NS and other labels), disregards others (e.g., relations between NS and traditional products). It is advisable, therefore, to widen the scope of NS research to properly address the concerns of European society and to provide policymakers with robust evidence to support their decisions

Competition and Efficiency: Some theoretical prescription and Empirical evidence for the European dairy industry

This paper analyses the mechanisms through which increasing market competition may help cooperatives to improve technical efficiency to guarantee positive profits. This hypothesis is first formalised in a partial equilibrium framework and then is tested on a sample of European investor owned and cooperative firms, belonging to the dairy industry, using frontier analysis. Technical efficiency indexes are computed by using the one-stage approach as suggested by Reifschneider and Stevenson (1991), where proxies for competition are introduced as determinants of efficiency variancey. The results support the hypothesis that increasing market competition can affect positively the cooperatives\ub4 efficiency. Depositato come Quaderno del Dipartimento TESAF n. 96. Disponibile come Working Paper n. 3/2006 del Centro per la Formazione in Economia e Politica dello Sviluppo Rurale al sito: http://www.depa.unina.it/depa/WP_3_2006.pd

Exploring the Interplay of Risk Attitude and Organic Food Consumption

This exploratory study seeks to advance the research on consumers’ preference for organic food eating by investigating the potential association between organic food consumption (OC) frequency and the individual risk attitude. Moreover, inspired by the literature, we investigate also the association between OC and the perceived OC related health improvement (i.e. the avoidance of health risks), subjective trust toward the certification, social norms and several lifestyle factors. Based on a direct survey of 223 Italian college students, a lottery task was used to characterize the individual risk attitude and a simultaneous equation model was estimated. This study marks a beginning by showing a significant relationship between being risk averse and a high organic food eating, offering a hint for future research avenues in the organic domain

Toward the implementation of the income stabilization tool: An analysis of factors affecting the probability of farm income losses in Italy

Over the last years, EU agricultural farms suffered an increased sensitivity to market fluctuations in terms of both production flows and incomes, due especially to climate change and market globalisation. In addition to previous instruments as insurances and mutual funds, the new reform of European Common Agricultural Policy 2014-2020 proposes a new instrument, namely the Income Stabilisation Tool (IST), in order to specifically support farmers' severe income drops. This study aims at contributing to the lively debate on risk management linked to the implementation of the IST by estimating the probability of income loss in relation to farm attributes in Italy

Simulation of a mutual fund to stabilise the income of farms belonging to a dairy cooperative

In the last years, the high volatility of the dairy market has exposed farmers to a strong income risk, which is expected to increase. In this context, with the reg. (EU) 1305/2013, European Union tried to encourage the adoption of risk management tools such as insurance, mutual funds and the Income Stabilisation Tool (IST). The IST is a mutual fund that compensates farmers for severe income losses, but nowadays it is still very little applied. The reform of reg. (EU) 1305/2013 by the so-called Omnibus Regulation, introduced relevant innovation allowing for sector-specific IST, a reduced threshold (20%) and the use of indexes. The simulation of a sector-specific IST under Omnibus Regulation is performed on 167 farms belonging to a dairy cooperative in Veneto Region (Italy)

Price Determinants of Sparkling Wine in Poland: Does Reputation Really Matter?

Due to the important worldwide growth of the sparkling wine sector in the last years, this research aims to explore the Polish sparkling wine retail market by applying a hedonic price model. Poland is the most important market in Eastern Europe, with a noticeable increase in wine consumption in recent years. Few researches have investigated the price premium of wine attributes in this area, while none of these concentrated their analysis on sparkling wines. The aim of this research is to apply a hedonic price model to estimate the effects of credence attributes and quality signals on sparkling wines sold in the Polish capital. Data were collected from 35 retail stores in Warsaw. Findings suggest that collective reputation linked to designation of origin is the variable that most affects the price, followed by brand reputation and characteristics of the point of sale. The type of retailer has a significant effect on price: discounts and supermarkets imply a price decrease with respect to hypermarkets, whereas specialised shops charge a premium. Moreover, we explore the presence of wine with Italian sounding names: this positively affects wine price, confirming the role of imitations stressed in the recent literature

A preliminary test on risk and ambiguity attitudes, and time preferences in decisions under uncertainty: towards a better explanation of participation in crop insurance schemes

The exposure of farmers to different (and increasing) risks has been recognized by the EU policy, which supports several risk management tools through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Despite the vulnerability of the agricultural sector, and the attention paid at the EU level, the uptake of such tools is generally low across EU countries. The Italian case is emblematic: the uptake of subsidized crop insurance contracts is low, limited to few products, and concentrated in few areas. Coherently, the interest of policy makers toward explaining these characteristics and in gaining insights on the interventions that may help promoting participation is intense. This contribution investigates behavioral aspects linked to choices under risk and ambiguity, and account for time preferences in order to mimic the scenario faced by the potential adopters of the subsidized crop insurance contracts in Italy. Data are collected through questionnaires submitted to students from agricultural colleges in three administrative regions located in northern, central and southern Italy. Results show that attitude toward risk, ambiguity, and impatience are correlated with the intrinsic characteristics of respondents. In addition, some of those attitudes may help explaining decisions under uncertainty. Despite the empirical analysis is preliminary and focused on students, it allowed to validate a promising methodological approach capable of explaining farmer’s willingness to adopt (or renew) insurance contracts. By accounting for (currently under-investigated) behavioral aspects, it is likely to prove useful to re-design or implementing, more effectively, the current policies

A preliminary test on risk and ambiguity attitudes, and time preferences in decisions under uncertainty: towards a better explanation of participation in crop insurance schemes

The exposure of farmers to different (and increasing) risks has been recognized by the EU policy, which supports several risk management tools through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Despite the vulnerability of the agricultural sector, and the attention paid at the EU level, the uptake of such tools is generally low across EU countries. The Italian case is emblematic: the uptake of subsidized crop insurance contracts is low, limited to few products, and concentrated in few areas. Coherently, the interest of policy makers toward explaining these characteristics and in gaining insights on the interventions that may help promoting participation is intense. This contribution investigates behavioral aspects linked to choices under risk and ambiguity, and account for time preferences in order to mimic the scenario faced by the potential adopters of the subsidized crop insurance contracts in Italy. Data are collected through questionnaires submitted to students from agricultural colleges in three administrative regions located in northern, central and southern Italy. Results show that attitude toward risk, ambiguity, and impatience are correlated with the intrinsic characteristics of respondents. In addition, some of those attitudes may help explaining decisions under uncertainty. Despite the empirical analysis is preliminary and focused on students, it allowed to validate a promising methodological approach capable of explaining farmer’s willingness to adopt (or renew) insurance contracts. By accounting for (currently under-investigated) behavioral aspects, it is likely to prove useful to re-design or implementing, more effectively, the current policies

Il credito agrario

Si espande il ricorso al credito ma la crisi economica pone interrogativi sugli scenari futur