‘The scarlet letters’: Information disclosure and self-regulation: Evidence from antibiotic use in Denmark

This article presents the first empirical estimates regarding the impact of information disclosure on farmers’ economic behavior in terms of antibiotic use. We used the Danish government’s public release of information regarding antibiotic use among pig farms in summer 2010 as a quasi-experiment to exploit the variation in the intensity of damage to farmers’ reputation. The study finds that the information disclosure has induced a significant (20–30%) reduction in pig farmer’s subsequent antibiotic use, with the largest reductions for farms specialized in finisher pig production, both when evaluating the volume of active compounds and the number of prescribed doses. The results also show that the public disclosure has no effect on the survival of farmers in the market, however; it has induced input substitution in terms of increased purchase of vaccines.