Optimal Policy Response to Food Fraud

We analyze the optimal government response to food adulteration and mislabeling while accounting for heterogeneity in consumer preferences and producer efficiency, endogeneity in producer quality choices, and asymmetries in food fraud detection. When more-efficient producers commit fraud, the optima...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of agricultural and resource economics Vol. 46; no. 3; pp. 343 - 360
Main Authors Meerza, Syed Imran Ali, Giannakas, Konstantinos, Yiannaka, Amalia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Logan Western Agricultural Economics Association 01.09.2021
Edition1835
Subjects
Agribusiness
Agricultural and Food Policy
Agricultural production
Certification
Consumers
Corruption
Costs
Dishonesty
Efficiency
Enforcement
Food
Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety
Food products
Food quality
Fraud
Fraud prevention
Heterogeneity
Horsemeat
Institutional and Behavioral Economics
Interest groups
Labeling
Melamine
Olive oil
Product quality
Purity
Scandals
Side effects
United States > US
China
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:We analyze the optimal government response to food adulteration and mislabeling while accounting for heterogeneity in consumer preferences and producer efficiency, endogeneity in producer quality choices, and asymmetries in food fraud detection. When more-efficient producers commit fraud, the optimal policy response is a strict monitoring and enforcement system. For less-efficient producers, both increased certification costs and monitoring and enforcement can deter food fraud. When the government desires to increase average product quality, the optimal policy is strict monitoring and enforcement. Increasing monitoring and enforcement in the presence of corruption provides increased incentives for collusion between dishonest producers and corrupt policy enforcers.
ISSN:1068-5502
2327-8285
DOI:10.22004/ag.econ.307459