IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/ajagec/v105y2023i1p144-173.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Collective investment in a common pool resource: Grower associations and food safety guidelines

Author

Listed:
  • Aaron Adalja
  • Erik Lichtenberg
  • Elina T. Page

Abstract

Common pool resources often face overexploitation, but collective action can counteract that tendency. We investigate collective investment in reputation for produce food safety, a common pool resource because of limited branding and traceability, by U.S. commodity organizations. We use a unique dataset constructed with data from U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and industry to provide novel evidence on collective investment in common pool resources. Notably, only large shocks to reputation such as foodborne disease outbreaks resulting in hospitalization increase the likelihood of food safety guideline adoption. Adoption of food safety guidelines by government‐backed organizations results in improvements in some food safety outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Aaron Adalja & Erik Lichtenberg & Elina T. Page, 2023. "Collective investment in a common pool resource: Grower associations and food safety guidelines," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(1), pages 144-173, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:ajagec:v:105:y:2023:i:1:p:144-173
    DOI: 10.1111/ajae.12291
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12291
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ajae.12291?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heintzelman, Martin D. & Salant, Stephen W. & Schott, Stephan, 2009. "Putting free-riding to work: A Partnership Solution to the common-property problem," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 309-320, May.
    2. McQuade, Timothy & Salant, Stephen W. & Winfree, Jason, 2016. "Markets with untraceable goods of unknown quality: Beyond the small-country case," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 112-119.
    3. Leland, Hayne E, 1979. "Quacks, Lemons, and Licensing: A Theory of Minimum Quality Standards," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(6), pages 1328-1346, December.
    4. Sébastien Pouliot & Daniel A. Sumner, 2008. "Traceability, Liability, and Incentives for Food Safety and Quality," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 90(1), pages 15-27.
    5. Rafael Rob & Arthur Fishman, 2005. "Is Bigger Better? Customer Base Expansion through Word-of-Mouth Reputation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(5), pages 1146-1175, October.
    6. Marco Costanigro & Craig A. Bond & Jill J. McCluskey, 2012. "Reputation Leaders, Quality Laggards: Incentive Structure in Markets with Both Private and Collective Reputations," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(2), pages 245-264, June.
    7. Alexander E. Saak, 2012. "Collective Reputation, Social Norms, and Participation," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 94(3), pages 763-785.
    8. David Dranove & Ginger Zhe Jin, 2010. "Quality Disclosure and Certification: Theory and Practice," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(4), pages 935-963, December.
    9. Jason A. Winfree & Jill J. McCluskey, 2005. "Collective Reputation and Quality," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 87(1), pages 206-213.
    10. Mark R. Powell, 2016. "Trends in Reported Foodborne Illness in the United States; 1996–2013," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(8), pages 1589-1598, August.
    11. Stefano Castriota & Marco Delmastro, 2015. "The Economics of Collective Reputation: Evidence from the Wine Industry," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 97(2), pages 469-489.
    12. Carl Shapiro, 1983. "Premiums for High Quality Products as Returns to Reputations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(4), pages 659-679.
    13. Michael R. Thomsen & Andrew M. McKenzie, 2001. "Market Incentives for Safe Foods: An Examination of Shareholder Losses from Meat and Poultry Recalls," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 83(3), pages 526-538.
    14. Alberto Abadie & Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2020. "Sampling‐Based versus Design‐Based Uncertainty in Regression Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(1), pages 265-296, January.
    15. Jean Tirole, 1996. "A Theory of Collective Reputations (with applications to the persistence of corruption and to firm quality)," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(1), pages 1-22.
    16. Bovay, John & Ferrier, Peyton & Zhen, Chen, 2018. "Estimated Costs for Fruit and Vegetable Producers To Comply With the Food Safety Modernization Act’s Produce Rule," Economic Information Bulletin 276220, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    17. Sun, Liyang & Abraham, Sarah, 2021. "Estimating dynamic treatment effects in event studies with heterogeneous treatment effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 175-199.
    18. Pierre Fleckinger, 2007. "Collective Reputation and Market Structure: Regulating the Quality vs Quantity Trade-of," Working Papers hal-00243080, HAL.
    19. Ellis, Christopher J., 2001. "Common Pool Equities: An Arbitrage Based Non-cooperative Solution to the Common Pool Resource Problem," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 140-155, September.
    20. Baland, Jean-Marie & Platteau, Jean-Philippe, 1998. "Wealth Inequality and Efficiency in the Commons, Part II: The Regulated Case," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(1), pages 1-22, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lin, Wen & Ma, Baojie & Liang, Jiangyuan & Jin, Shaosheng, 2024. "Price response to government disclosure of food safety information in developing markets," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Adalja, Aaron & Lichtenberg, Erik, 2016. "Foodborne Illness Outbreaks, Collective Reputation, and Voluntary Adoption of Industry-wide Food Safety Protocols by Fruit and Vegetable Growers," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235865, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Fulvio Fontini & Katrin Millock & Michele Moretto, 2018. "Collective reputation with stochastic production and unknown willingness to pay for quality," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 20(2), pages 387-410, April.
    3. Jianyu Yu & Zohra Bouamra-Mechemache & Angelo Zago, 2018. "What is in a Name? Information, Heterogeneity, and Quality in a Theory of Nested Names," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(1), pages 286-310.
    4. Jason A. Winfree, 2023. "Collective reputation and food," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(2), pages 666-683, June.
    5. Stefano Castriota & Paolo Frumento & Francesco Suppressa, 2024. "Identifying the collective reputation premium: a spatial discontinuity approach," Discussion Papers 2024/310, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    6. Pecchioli, Bruno & Moroz, David, 2023. "Do geographical appellations provide useful quality signals? The case of Scotch single malt whiskies," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    7. Stefano Castriota & Marco Delmastro, 2010. "Individual and Collective Reputation: Lessons from the Wine Market," L'industria, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 149-172.
    8. Zago, Angelo, 2015. "La réputation collective sur les marchés agricoles," Économie rurale, French Society of Rural Economics (SFER Société Française d'Economie Rurale), vol. 345(January-F).
    9. Caracciolo, Francesco & D’Amico, Mario & Di Vita, Giuseppe & Pomarici, Eugenio & Dal Bianco, Andrea & Cembalo, Luigi, 2016. "Private vs. Collective Wine Reputation," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 19(3), pages 1-20, August.
    10. Mérel, Pierre & Ortiz-Bobea, Ariel & Paroissien, Emmanuel, 2021. "How big is the “lemons” problem? Historical evidence from French wines," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    11. McQuade, Timothy & Salant, Stephen W. & Winfree, Jason, 2009. "Markets with untraceable goods of unknown quality: a market failure exacerbated by globalization," MPRA Paper 21874, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Fares, M’hand & Raza, Saqlain & Thomas, Alban, 2018. "Is there complementarity between labels and brands? Evidence from small French co-operatives," TSE Working Papers 18-895, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    13. Patrizia Fanasch, 2019. "Survival of the fittest: The impact of eco‐certification and reputation on firm performance," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 611-628, May.
    14. Timothy McQuade & Stephen Salant & Jason Winfree, 2012. "Regulating an Experience Good Produced in the Formal Sector of a Developing Country when Consumers Cannot Identify Producers," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 512-526, November.
    15. Zhanguo Zhu & Qinyuan Shen & Zhifeng Gao, 2022. "Consumer choices in agricultural markets with multitier collective labels and private brands," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(4), pages 905-922, October.
    16. Costanigro, Marco & Scozzafava, Gabriele & Casini, Leonardo, 2019. "Vertical differentiation via multi-tier geographical indications and the consumer perception of quality: The case of Chianti wines," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 246-259.
    17. Pierre Fleckinger, 2007. "Collective Reputation and Market Structure: Regulating the Quality vs Quantity Trade-of," Working Papers hal-00243080, HAL.
    18. Jin, Yu & Zhou, Jiehong & Ye, Juntao, 2023. "Value of certification in collective reputation crises: Evidence from Chinese dairy firms," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    19. Dieter Pennerstorfer & Christoph Weiss & Andreas Huber, 2019. "Experts, Reputation and Umbrella Effects: Empirical Evidence from Wine Prices," Economics working papers 2019-08, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    20. M’hand Fares & Saqlain Raza & Alban Thomas, 2018. "Is There Complementarity Between Certified Labels and Brands? Evidence from Small French Cooperatives," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 53(2), pages 367-395, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:ajagec:v:105:y:2023:i:1:p:144-173. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1467-8276 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.