GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- While consumers are aware of genetically modified crops and food, their knowledge level is limited and often at odds with the facts, according to a newly published study by a University of Florida researcher.
Last year, Brandon McFadden, an assistant professor of food and resource economics at the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, published a study that showed scientific facts scarcely change consumers’ impressions of genetically modified food and other organisms.
Consumer polls are often cited in policy debates about genetically modified food labeling. This is especially true when discussing whether food that is genetically modified should carry mandatory labels, McFadden said. In conducting their current study, McFadden and his colleague, Jayson Lusk, an agricultural economics professor at Oklahoma State University, wanted to know what data supported consumers’ beliefs about genetically modified food and gain a better understanding of preferences for a mandatory label.
So he conducted the survey to better understand what consumers know about biotechnology, breeding techniques and label preferences for GM foods.
Researchers used an online survey of 1,004 participants that asked questions to measure consumers’ knowledge of genetically modified food and organisms. Some of those questions tried to determine objective knowledge of genetically modified organisms, while others aimed to find out consumers’ beliefs about genetically modified foods and crops.
The results led McFadden to conclude that consumers do not know as much about the facts of genetically modified food and crops as they think they do.
Of those sampled, 84 percent supported a mandatory label for food containing genetically modified ingredients. However, 80 percent also supported a mandatory label for food containing DNA, which would result in labeling almost all food.
“Our research indicates that the term ‘GM’ may imply to consumers that genetic modification alters the genetic structure of an organism, while other breeding techniques do not,” McFadden said.
As participants answered questions designed to measure their knowledge of scientific data on genetic modification, respondents seemed to change their statements about the safety of genetically modified foods, McFadden said.
The study is published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.
Last Modified: Mon, 23 May 2016 10:36:46 EDT
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Equal Pay Day
I wasn't going to write about this but a (female) colleague suggested I do so.
Equal Pay Day is supposed to be the day "that symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year." This is hilariously crude statistical analysis. In fact, men and women in the same occupations with similar experience and education actually make almost exactly the same salaries. In some fields, women earn more. The supposed "wage gap" is mostly a function of the choices men and women make in the labor force and has very little to do with discrimination.
Here's a helpful video:
Equal Pay Day is supposed to be the day "that symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year." This is hilariously crude statistical analysis. In fact, men and women in the same occupations with similar experience and education actually make almost exactly the same salaries. In some fields, women earn more. The supposed "wage gap" is mostly a function of the choices men and women make in the labor force and has very little to do with discrimination.
Here's a helpful video:
Friday, March 11, 2016
Relatively Good Regulation - GMO Edition
In previous posts on food labeling I've discussed food labels and the information they provide as well as possible reasons why a private GMO label hasn't already appeared. In this post, I'll discuss the reasons commodity groups are in favor of federal GMO labeling legislation.
Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) recently introduced legislation that would establish federal guidelines for GMO labeling. The law would preempt state mandates for GMO food labels and start an educational campaign for the public on the safety of GMO foods.
The question isn't whether farmers, food companies, and retailers believe the guidelines are good for them financially but whether these guidelines are better than the relevant alternative. I'd wager that food companies would, in an ideal world, prefer to label their food in a manner that maximizes their profit.
Since that world doesn't exist, and there's a credible threat that interest groups in some states will successfully pass legislation mandating GMO labels, federal preemption of such laws is preferable. For producer groups, federal preemption makes it less likely that potential discounts on conventionally-produced food will be passed on to them. Additionally, the cost of educating consumers will not be borne by food companies, retailers, and farmers but by taxpayers.
As I argued in a previous post, the tremendous cost of educating the public on the safety of GMO foods is one possible reason why we haven't seen widespread efforts by food companies or third parties to create a GMO labeling scheme. Another possible reason is the presence of substitute labels. Many consumers who are concerned about the safety of GMO food might be content buying food labeled "organic."
The more I think about it, though, the more I'm convinced that the main reason we haven't seen a third-party, private effort to create a GMO label is that the public generally trusts only the federal government to ensure food safety. It's true we have all sorts of private labels informing consumers of the characteristics of the food they buy, but safety is a separate issue in most people's minds.
The new legislation introduced is likely to be a net benefit to farmers, food companies, and retailers. They'll be shielded from the risk of more onerous regulation at the state level and won't have to bear the cost of educating the public about GMO safety. This makes the bill, from their points of view, relatively good regulation.
Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) recently introduced legislation that would establish federal guidelines for GMO labeling. The law would preempt state mandates for GMO food labels and start an educational campaign for the public on the safety of GMO foods.
The question isn't whether farmers, food companies, and retailers believe the guidelines are good for them financially but whether these guidelines are better than the relevant alternative. I'd wager that food companies would, in an ideal world, prefer to label their food in a manner that maximizes their profit.
Since that world doesn't exist, and there's a credible threat that interest groups in some states will successfully pass legislation mandating GMO labels, federal preemption of such laws is preferable. For producer groups, federal preemption makes it less likely that potential discounts on conventionally-produced food will be passed on to them. Additionally, the cost of educating consumers will not be borne by food companies, retailers, and farmers but by taxpayers.
As I argued in a previous post, the tremendous cost of educating the public on the safety of GMO foods is one possible reason why we haven't seen widespread efforts by food companies or third parties to create a GMO labeling scheme. Another possible reason is the presence of substitute labels. Many consumers who are concerned about the safety of GMO food might be content buying food labeled "organic."
The more I think about it, though, the more I'm convinced that the main reason we haven't seen a third-party, private effort to create a GMO label is that the public generally trusts only the federal government to ensure food safety. It's true we have all sorts of private labels informing consumers of the characteristics of the food they buy, but safety is a separate issue in most people's minds.
The new legislation introduced is likely to be a net benefit to farmers, food companies, and retailers. They'll be shielded from the risk of more onerous regulation at the state level and won't have to bear the cost of educating the public about GMO safety. This makes the bill, from their points of view, relatively good regulation.
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
The Costs of Coordination
Sometimes the most mundane subjects can be great illustrations of basic economic concepts. Earlier this week, Alex Tabarrok (George Mason U) blogged about the benefits of coordinating leisure time. I emphasize the word "benefits" because Tabarrok completely leaves out the costs.
He starts off by citing a paper in Sociological Science whose authors find that both unemployed and employed people experience more positive emotions and and fewer negative emotions on weekends. They claim that this is evidence that time is a network good and that everyone benefits by coordinating leisure time.
Tabarrok then complains that his employer's spring break is different from his children's. He says that not only would he and his family benefit from greater coordination of spring break time, but that his employer would as well. After all, this would amount to a free benefit to employees. He ends by advocating a national holiday that would, presumably, benefit everyone. The irony here is that George Mason U is a public school and could quite easily coordinate with the local primary and secondary schools.
If the benefits are so clear, why hasn't this national holiday materialized? The simplest answer is that there are also costs of coordinating in this way. A national holiday would likely mean very high ticket prices at Disneyland and extremely long lines at the rides at Six Flags. Anyone who has ever tried to fly, go to a beach, or head to a nearby amusement park during the two weeks of spring break in mid-March has known the boredom and frustration of sitting in traffic, paying high ticket fees, and waiting in very long lines.
Contrary to Tabarrok's calls for a national holiday, it could be the case that many of us could benefit from less-coordinated holidays. There are, in many areas of the country, plenty of fine days in April and May for visiting popular attractions yet most of us have the same 2 or 3 weeks off in March. The fact that many schools are moving to a non-standard "year-round" school year in which there are several week-long breaks dotted throughout the year is an indication that the costs of coordinating leisure time may be quite high in our present system.
In any discussion of the benefits of some new social arrangement, don't forget to include the costs!
He starts off by citing a paper in Sociological Science whose authors find that both unemployed and employed people experience more positive emotions and and fewer negative emotions on weekends. They claim that this is evidence that time is a network good and that everyone benefits by coordinating leisure time.
Tabarrok then complains that his employer's spring break is different from his children's. He says that not only would he and his family benefit from greater coordination of spring break time, but that his employer would as well. After all, this would amount to a free benefit to employees. He ends by advocating a national holiday that would, presumably, benefit everyone. The irony here is that George Mason U is a public school and could quite easily coordinate with the local primary and secondary schools.
If the benefits are so clear, why hasn't this national holiday materialized? The simplest answer is that there are also costs of coordinating in this way. A national holiday would likely mean very high ticket prices at Disneyland and extremely long lines at the rides at Six Flags. Anyone who has ever tried to fly, go to a beach, or head to a nearby amusement park during the two weeks of spring break in mid-March has known the boredom and frustration of sitting in traffic, paying high ticket fees, and waiting in very long lines.
Contrary to Tabarrok's calls for a national holiday, it could be the case that many of us could benefit from less-coordinated holidays. There are, in many areas of the country, plenty of fine days in April and May for visiting popular attractions yet most of us have the same 2 or 3 weeks off in March. The fact that many schools are moving to a non-standard "year-round" school year in which there are several week-long breaks dotted throughout the year is an indication that the costs of coordinating leisure time may be quite high in our present system.
In any discussion of the benefits of some new social arrangement, don't forget to include the costs!
Friday, February 19, 2016
Pigou's Persistence
I recently ran across an interesting working paper by James McClure and Tyler Watts on some lesser-known or lesser-applied critiques of the standard Pigouvian perspective on externalities. The authors note that Pigou's perspective is still the standard in today's undergraduate texts, teaching students that externalities cause all manner of market failures which governments can fix with the appropriate political will.
The author's quote Pigou's 1920 book "The Economics of Welfare"
Adam Smith's concept of the "invisible hand" is well known, if perhaps not well understood by most economists. (Pete Boettke recently wrote a great post on this subject.) McClure and Watts provide some helpful discussion on the subject:
McClure and Watts provide some interesting discussion on Coase's critique of Pigou, focusing on Coase's concept of "reciprocal harm:"
For instance, when prices of basic necessities skyrocket during a natural disaster, policymakers might feel the need to outlaw "price gouging." However, such a prohibition on higher prices would reduce the incentive to bring in more of the necessities from areas unaffected by the disaster. Aid might come much slower than it otherwise would have.
The authors state the issue more generally:
The author's quote Pigou's 1920 book "The Economics of Welfare"
No "invisible hand" can be relied on to produce a good arrangement of the whole from a combination of separate treatments of the parts. It is therefore necessary that an authority of wider reach should intervene to tackle the collective problems of beauty, of air, and light, as those other collective problems of gas and water have been tackled.Critiques of this perspective can be found all over the economic literature, but much of it is ignored in today's policy discussions. The authors identify 5 critiques and extensions of externality theory missing in current treatments of the subject: 1) the distinction between pecuniary and technological externalities, 2) the "invisible hand" as a generator of positive externalities, 3) the over-emphasis on negative externalities, 4) ignoring Coase's critique of Pigovian taxes as a solution to negative externalities, and 5) ignoring the potential for negative consequences of policy solutions to negative externalities. I'll discuss 2, 4, and 5 here and leave 1 and 3 to the interested reader.
Adam Smith's concept of the "invisible hand" is well known, if perhaps not well understood by most economists. (Pete Boettke recently wrote a great post on this subject.) McClure and Watts provide some helpful discussion on the subject:
The idea that "the market" generates positive external effects has been clearly articulated among a long line of economists, even though the term "externality" is often absent in their discussions. Since Adam Smith, economists have maintained that the use of scarce resources in ways that foster prosperity throughout society generally is the natural, but unintended, byproduct of economic interactions between individuals each pursuing his or her own self-interest.I agree with the authors that Smith's concept of the invisible hand can be thought of as a positive externality. Boettke's post above also notes that Smith's concept is fundamentally about institutions, not about perfect information and other elements of individual rationality.
McClure and Watts provide some interesting discussion on Coase's critique of Pigou, focusing on Coase's concept of "reciprocal harm:"
To expose the weaknesses in Pigou's approach, Coase considered the reciprocal harm inherent in two conceptual experiments; in each the production of one economic good interferes with the production of other goods.Since both production processes in question produce economic goods, there is a trade off associated with taxing or subsidizing either process. In a previous post I discussed a column by Dierdre McCloskey in which she discusses a more important insight from Coase regarding externalities. In her characteristic style, McCloskey puts it this way:
Coase is forever saying that this or that proposal for a public policy entails knowing things that no economist can in fact know. He claims, with considerable empirical evidence, that in many cases laissez faire will be in practice better than what we will get from actual governments - though neither is perfect (we live in a second-best world, that is, a world of transaction costs). The methodological point is that Coase does not claim to have proven laissez faire on a blackboard. He says in effect, "If you look at the FCC or the lighthouses or the law of liability you see that governmental attempts to guide things minute-by-minute - as you say, Tom, 'getting the prices right'- don't work very well. Maybe it's better to just deal the cards and play. But in this veil of tears there are no guarantees. It may not work like some curves you have drawn. Life is hard. Knowledge is scarce. Grow up and admit that you can't extract policy from a couple of lines on a blackboard.Finally, McClure and Watts discuss inframarginal or "irrelevant" externalities that can be relevant to policy decisions. The idea is that a policy designed to correct some problem with market allocations or prices may, on net, harm people if there is some positive externality "hidden" in a negative one.
For instance, when prices of basic necessities skyrocket during a natural disaster, policymakers might feel the need to outlaw "price gouging." However, such a prohibition on higher prices would reduce the incentive to bring in more of the necessities from areas unaffected by the disaster. Aid might come much slower than it otherwise would have.
The authors state the issue more generally:
Any policy that attempts correction of a negative externality while ignoring positive externalities in the form of inframarginal benefits, risks the possibility that corrective policy may impose welfare losses that could, if of sufficient magnitude, end up making matters worse than had the negative externality been ignored.The article is an interesting read so, as usual, I recommend reading the whole thing. There are of course many applications of these theoretical insights in agriculture. As the (vocal subset of the) public continues to emphasize the negative externalities associated with production agriculture, it will become more important to bring the insights of Coase, Demsetz, Buchanan, and others to bear.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Price and Non-Price Allocation - A Personal Story
I've been very busy lately but I want to share a short personal story that illustrates an important economic principle.
Last year our son started speech therapy with a highly-qualified and experienced pediatric speech therapist. She's really good with him and he has made tremendous progress over the last year. She was able to get us in within a couple of weeks of our first contact with her and he's been seeing her nearly every week since.
The speech therapist is paid through our health insurance, so we pay a specialist copay for each visit. After about six months of seeing her twice a week, we started feeling the pinch of what amounted to several hundred dollars per month in copays. Figuring that the school system would provide us with an equally-qualified speech therapist and considering that we already pay taxes to fund the school system, we thought we'd start sending our son to the local grade school for therapy.
It's been four months since we first contacted the school and he still hasn't seen a speech therapist there (he continues to see the other therapist). By contrast, our current therapist saw him in roughly 1/4 the time after our first contact. We've called the school a couple of times just to be sure they haven't forgotten us. They've assured us that we are "on the list" and that this is a typical wait time.
Last year our son started speech therapy with a highly-qualified and experienced pediatric speech therapist. She's really good with him and he has made tremendous progress over the last year. She was able to get us in within a couple of weeks of our first contact with her and he's been seeing her nearly every week since.
The speech therapist is paid through our health insurance, so we pay a specialist copay for each visit. After about six months of seeing her twice a week, we started feeling the pinch of what amounted to several hundred dollars per month in copays. Figuring that the school system would provide us with an equally-qualified speech therapist and considering that we already pay taxes to fund the school system, we thought we'd start sending our son to the local grade school for therapy.
It's been four months since we first contacted the school and he still hasn't seen a speech therapist there (he continues to see the other therapist). By contrast, our current therapist saw him in roughly 1/4 the time after our first contact. We've called the school a couple of times just to be sure they haven't forgotten us. They've assured us that we are "on the list" and that this is a typical wait time.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Potpourri
Ag Econ Research & Extension
Jayson Lusk discusses an article on returns to publicly-funded agricultural research and extension. He also tackles the question: "Is ag econ academic research cited?" and answers in the affirmative.
Healthcare Reform
Two perspectives on recent developments related to Obamacare: one from Shikha Dalmia and another from Paul Krugman.
I, Pencil Revisited?
George Leef responds to a criticism of the famous essay "I, Pencil."
Regulatory Announcements
The Obama administration picks some interesting dates to announce new regulations.
A student gives a creative example of an externality.
David Henderson's student has a good understanding of Public Choice.
A new edition of Alchian and Allen's textbook.
Don Boudreaux lists some myths busted in a forthcoming edition of Alchian and Allen.
Jayson Lusk discusses an article on returns to publicly-funded agricultural research and extension. He also tackles the question: "Is ag econ academic research cited?" and answers in the affirmative.
Is Econ 101 Worthless?
David Henderson and Don Boudreaux respond to Noah Smith's contention that most of what we teach in Econ 101 is wrong.Healthcare Reform
Two perspectives on recent developments related to Obamacare: one from Shikha Dalmia and another from Paul Krugman.
I, Pencil Revisited?
George Leef responds to a criticism of the famous essay "I, Pencil."
Regulatory Announcements
The Obama administration picks some interesting dates to announce new regulations.
A student gives a creative example of an externality.
David Henderson's student has a good understanding of Public Choice.
A new edition of Alchian and Allen's textbook.
Don Boudreaux lists some myths busted in a forthcoming edition of Alchian and Allen.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Are Rentiers Valuable?
A few weeks ago I had a short conversation with someone who believed that "unearned income" from asset ownership should be taxed nearly completely away. Why, my interlocutor asked, are speculators and those who live on interest entitled to that money? He said that they hadn't produced anything to earn their money and so should have to give nearly all of it to the poor.
What is "unearned income?" Wikipedia defines it as "income received by virtue of owning property (known as property income), inheritance, pensions and payments received from public welfare. The three major forms of unearned income based on property ownership are rent, received from the ownership of natural resources; interest, received by virtue of owning financial assets; and profit, received from the ownership of capital equipment."
This definition lends itself to a moral distinction between earned income (which is justly acquired since some kind of physical discomfort was required to get it) and unearned income (which doesn't require any work in the present). This distinction is lost on me personally because someone at some point had to work to acquire an asset. It's true that heirs have assets transferred to them without work, but the fact that the maxim "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" is about 2000 years old suggests that their unearned wealth will go to others in pretty short order.
What is "unearned income?" Wikipedia defines it as "income received by virtue of owning property (known as property income), inheritance, pensions and payments received from public welfare. The three major forms of unearned income based on property ownership are rent, received from the ownership of natural resources; interest, received by virtue of owning financial assets; and profit, received from the ownership of capital equipment."
This definition lends itself to a moral distinction between earned income (which is justly acquired since some kind of physical discomfort was required to get it) and unearned income (which doesn't require any work in the present). This distinction is lost on me personally because someone at some point had to work to acquire an asset. It's true that heirs have assets transferred to them without work, but the fact that the maxim "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" is about 2000 years old suggests that their unearned wealth will go to others in pretty short order.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Perfect Markets and the Beauty of B School Economics
Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek has written several posts recently that are related to some of the themes I've been focusing on lately. (See his posts here, here, and here.) I'll quote from the first one and provide some of my thoughts.
The market process is chiefly one of entrepreneurs spotting market failures and sub-optimal situations – spotting problems that have yet to be ‘solved’ adequately by market (or non-market) forces – and then experimenting with actions to address such problems. The discipline to ensure that such experiments work as well as possible over time is supplied by (1) the fact that those who do the experimenting in private markets put their own money and effort on the line (rather than money and effort forcibly commandeered from others), (2) consumers’ freedom to buy or not to buy the resulting products, and (3) the actual and potential competing experimenters who do, or might, arise along side of the initial entrepreneurial experimenter. And this on-going process is indeed just that: a process that, as much as it improves market performances over time, never comes close to creating any situation that deserves the name “perfect market.”
Sunday, May 24, 2015
The Importance of Economic Education in Regulatory Reform
A Mercatus Center blog post from last year on the need for regulatory reform popped up in our Twitter feed yesterday. The article makes several points about the need for a process of consistent regulatory reform. Specifically the authors note that
The total number of restrictions in federal regulations has grown from about 835,000 in 1997 to over 1 million by 2010. Over time, these accumulated restrictions can either directly foreclose paths to innovation or entrepreneurship or add up to the point where their cumulative cost makes certain actions prohibitively expensive.They go on to state that every president since Carter has tried to reduce the burden of "nonfunctioning" regulation, but there has not been a substantial decrease in the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). In fact, the CFR has consistently grown over the last several decades.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Scientific Evidence that 4-H is Awesome
Bryan Caplan recently discussed an article published in the Journal of Marriage and Family about how kids aged 0-12 spend their time and how the activities in which they engage affect their academic achievement.
The authors of the article controlled for a whole host of individual factors such as income, family characteristics, race, sex, and investigate many factors thought to drive academic achievement such as leisure, housework, being in school, studying, doing sports, going to church, watching TV, etc.
Bryan focuses on the somewhat surprising results that TV doesn't do much harm and studying or being in school don't (at the margin) have much of a positive impact. He also discusses one of the two consistently statistically significant factors: reading. I found the other significant effect more interesting.
That other big driver of academic achievement is called by the authors of the article "visiting." This term is just weird and seems pretty unclear until you pull up the article and execute a ctrl-f search for the word. Visiting, according to the authors, is a catchall term that means organized activity that is not church-sponsored and does not involve sports. My first thought when reading this was 4-H!
Children involved in 4-H can expect to learn a wide array of life skills and interact with a wide range of people from different walks of life and age groups. Whether you live in a rural area or dwell in the city, 4-H has something for your children. Kids learn about biology, citizenship, art, nutrition and fitness, leadership, public speaking, and more. This is all done in an atmosphere that is supportive of the child and his/her development.
So there you have it. Although the article doesn't specifically mention 4-H, this seems to me to be scientific evidence that 4-H is awesome!
The authors of the article controlled for a whole host of individual factors such as income, family characteristics, race, sex, and investigate many factors thought to drive academic achievement such as leisure, housework, being in school, studying, doing sports, going to church, watching TV, etc.
Bryan focuses on the somewhat surprising results that TV doesn't do much harm and studying or being in school don't (at the margin) have much of a positive impact. He also discusses one of the two consistently statistically significant factors: reading. I found the other significant effect more interesting.
That other big driver of academic achievement is called by the authors of the article "visiting." This term is just weird and seems pretty unclear until you pull up the article and execute a ctrl-f search for the word. Visiting, according to the authors, is a catchall term that means organized activity that is not church-sponsored and does not involve sports. My first thought when reading this was 4-H!
Children involved in 4-H can expect to learn a wide array of life skills and interact with a wide range of people from different walks of life and age groups. Whether you live in a rural area or dwell in the city, 4-H has something for your children. Kids learn about biology, citizenship, art, nutrition and fitness, leadership, public speaking, and more. This is all done in an atmosphere that is supportive of the child and his/her development.
So there you have it. Although the article doesn't specifically mention 4-H, this seems to me to be scientific evidence that 4-H is awesome!
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Potpourri
Matt Bogard provides a commentary on a recent episode of EconTalk with Greg Page, former CEO of Cargill.
Don Boudreaux discusses, in an entertaining fashion, the political economy of K-12 education and here gives an example of where policy "nudging" leads.
Jayson Lusk discusses regulatory costs in the context of GMO wheat varieites.
Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University points to an interesting case of risk compensation, also known as the Peltzman Effect after Sam Peltzman, a Chicago School economist.
Pete Boettke of George Mason University gives an interview on the rise of an important free-market school of economic thought: the Austrian School.
Don Boudreaux discusses, in an entertaining fashion, the political economy of K-12 education and here gives an example of where policy "nudging" leads.
Jayson Lusk discusses regulatory costs in the context of GMO wheat varieites.
Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University points to an interesting case of risk compensation, also known as the Peltzman Effect after Sam Peltzman, a Chicago School economist.
Pete Boettke of George Mason University gives an interview on the rise of an important free-market school of economic thought: the Austrian School.
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