The Supply of Health in Food: The Economics of Innovation Behaviour, Brand Competition and Changing Consumer Preferences

在肥胖、II型糖尿病和动脉硬化等与营养相关的疾病日益增多的背景下，促进更健康的生活方式是一个高度相关的卫生政策问题。食品工业和零售商在这方面发挥着关键作用，因为他们决定所供应的加工食品的配方和价格。然而，从经济角度来看，人们仍然不太清楚企业面临哪些激励措施来提供具有高健康价值的产品，以及这些激励措施如何受到消费者偏好、政策干预和竞争的影响。该项目的目标是调查与产品重新配制和定价有关的与健康有关的公司行为，并就政策和福利得出结论。分析基于产业组织的先进计量经济学方法和理念。大型零售企业新产品引进和销售的综合数据为估计差异化的品牌级需求系统提供了依据。将通过距离度量法检查营养概况以及健康和营养声明对替代过程的具体影响。然后，将这些估计与成本信息一起用于建立结构性市场模型，该模型允许对不同政策和竞争情景下的定价和创新战略以及不断变化的消费者偏好进行建模。

Against the background of rising nutrition-related diseases such as obesity, type-II-diabetes, and arteriosclerosis, advancing healthier lifestyles is a highly relevant health policy issue. The food industry and retailers play a key role in this context, since they decide on formulation and prices of process food products supplied. However, from an economic perspective, it is still poorly understood which incentives firms face to offer products with a high health value and how these incentives are affected by consumer preferences, policy interventions and competition. The objective of this project is to investigate health-relevant firm behaviour related to product reformulation and pricing and to draw conclusions for policies and welfare. The analysis rests on advanced econometric methodologies and concepts from industrial organization. Comprehensive data on new product introduction and sales of a large retailing company provide the basis to estimate differentiated brand-level demand systems. Specific impacts of nutrient profiles and health and nutrition claims on substitutive processes will be examined by means of the distance metrics-approach. These estimates are then used together with cost information to establish a structural market model which allows modelling of pricing and innovation strategies under different policy and competition scenarios and changing consumer preferences.