Research in Food Economics: past trends and new challenges

Over the past 30 years, food chains in Europe have undergone a dramatic transformation resulting from technological, economic and other societal changes. In turn, this evolution has opened multiple new areas of research for food economists, and this review attempts to summarise major developments in the field by focusing on four salient topics: (i) the formation of retail food prices in the context of rising concentration in the food chain; (ii) the continuous process of differentiation of the goods exchanged on food markets, and concurrent decline in the importance of commodity markets; (iii) the issue of consumer trust in the safety of the goods supplied by the food chain, following several food scares; and (iv) the problem of the growing burden of diet-related chronic diseases. After summarising the main methodological and empirical contributions in the analysis of those issues, we conclude by identifying gaps in knowledge and unanswered questions which food economists may want to turn their attention to in the coming years.