Article "Healthy vs. unhealthy food: a strategic choice for firms and consumers" (17th)

Clarisa Livia
16611022


In choosing food, this article described also the type of public policy that can be done to reduce the aggregate consumption of unhealthy attributes. In addition to fiscal policies that increase unhealthy food prices and discourage consumption, education campaigns have been considered, this policy has no effect if the emotional / health costs are relatively low.

However, some food attributes can be conceptualized as having a horizontal feature, while others (taste, quality, etc.) are vertical. The static nature of the model does not allow one to analyze the long-term effects on health derived from unhealthy consumption habits. From the perspective of health authorities, this issue is important because health spending has increased in developed countries over the last decade. The proportion of increased health spending is dedicated to addressing health problems related to obesity. Thus, an interesting model extension is to analyze, in a dynamic context, the decision to produce and consume food when there are negative health effects in the future. In this case, the addictive components of unhealthy food and self-control and time preferences that are not consistent on the demand side should be taken into account.