Suchergebnisse

Da oltre vent'anni l'Unione Europea (UE) è protagonista di un acceso dibattito circa l'orami vasta adozione di OGM in agricoltura. Laddove la maggior parte dei paesi Nord e Sud americani ha già largamente introdotto tali colture, l'UE è invece in forte ritardo, complice una legislazione basata sul Principio di Precauzione. Queste discrepanze nei i processi legislativi hanno portato a galla alcune problematiche di carattere commerciale: primo, la riduzione delle disponibilità di materia prima non-OGM costituisce un problema per la stabilità delle filiere ad essa dedicate; secondo, il commercio di prodotti convenzionali è compromesso dalla possibilità di riscontrare varietà OGM non approvate in UE all'interno delle partite provenienti da paesi terzi. In ultimo, data l'ampia diffusione di OGM nelle Americhe, è lecito porsi il quesito di come tale tendenza abbia influito sui prezzi delle materie prime agricole. In questa tesi si cercherà di analizzare queste tematiche. Per prima cosa, ci occupiamo di capire come la filiera della soia non-OGM italiana sia organizzata e gestita in modo da minimizzare i rischi di presenza avventizia. La conclusione è che le forme di governance ibride garantiscono la migliore forma di gestione. Successivamente ci domandiamo se le diversità legislative in materia di OGM abbiamo un impatto sull'import Europeo di mais e soia. Utilizzando l'analisi della domanda, riscontriamo che i paesi esportatori competono o sul prezzo o in base alla disponibilità stagionale di prodotto. In ultimo, utilizzando serie storiche, analizziamo il ruolo del tasso di adozione di soia OGM sui prezzi reali; ciò che osserviamo indica che questo ha un effetto deflattivo di breve periodo, ma di scarso peso. ; The debate on the increasing adoption of GMOs in agriculture has been in vogue for the last twenty years. Whereas most North and South American countries have largely adopted GMOs, the European Union (EU) has not. Since the EU legislation is based on the Precautionary Principle, the introduction of new GM varieties has been slow. These discrepancies put forward some fundamental issues: first, the decreasing availability of non-GM raw materials poses the sustainability of these supply chains at risk; second, the trade of conventional products is undermined by the possible occurrence of unauthorized GMOs in overseas. Last, the wide adoption of GM crops in North and Latin America poses the question of what effect the spreading of biotechnology in agriculture has exerted on market prices. In this thesis, we try to answer these three research questions. First of all, we investigate how the Italian supply chain for non-GM soybean meal is framed and managed in order to reduce the risk of adventitious presence. We find that hybrid organizations represent the best governance form. Next, we assess the role of legislative diversities (regarding GMOs) on EU import decisions through import demand analysis. We conclude that competition among exporters is solely based on price and seasonality. Last, we disentangle the role of GMOs adoption on the variability of US soybean prices. Results indicate that a higher rate of adoption reduces real soybean market prices, yet the effect is short lived and not much relevant.

AbstractMeso‐institutions offer a promising theoretical approach for assessing the way in which firms govern their activities and transactions while embedded in the macro‐institutional environment. The concept of meso‐institutions also offers theoretical support when evaluating a wide variety of voluntary standards that have been introduced within value chains in recent decades. Such tools can be considered meso‐institutions because of their features, and because of their role in translating general normative rules into specific mechanisms that delineate the domain of activities of supply chain agents. While various aspects of meso‐institutions have been investigated, little is known about their relationship with micro‐level structures and the determinants of firm's voluntary participation. The present paper investigates the association between a private standard, different forms of transaction governance in the supply chain, and the role that internal and external risks play in voluntary participation in the standard. The analysis draws upon secondary data taken from a representative sample of firms that form part of the European soybean supply chain. Our findings show that firms that participate in this standard have fewer hybrid forms and higher levels of spot markets. This suggests that some of the functions of hybrid forms are fulfilled by the meso‐institution. The results also show that risks associated with firm's behavioral uncertainty are more conducive to the participation in the standard than environmental‐related risks.

AbstractLong-term exposure to ambient air pollutant concentrations is known to cause chronic lung inflammation, a condition that may promote increased severity of COVID-19 syndrome caused by the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). In this paper, we empirically investigate the ecologic association between long-term concentrations of area-level fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and excess deaths in the first quarter of 2020 in municipalities of Northern Italy. The study accounts for potentially spatial confounding factors related to urbanization that may have influenced the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 and related COVID-19 mortality. Our epidemiological analysis uses geographical information (e.g., municipalities) and negative binomial regression to assess whether both ambient PM2.5 concentration and excess mortality have a similar spatial distribution. Our analysis suggests a positive association of ambient PM2.5 concentration on excess mortality in Northern Italy related to the COVID-19 epidemic. Our estimates suggest that a one-unit increase in PM2.5 concentration (µg/m3) is associated with a 9% (95% confidence interval: 6–12%) increase in COVID-19 related mortality.

This cross-country investigation of food demand and its determinants confirmed a number of stylized facts: first, consumers respond to prices and the law of demand applies to all foods at a fairly high level of product disaggregation; second, most food products are necessities, as their demand responds positively but less than proportionally to changes in consumption expenditure, implying that Engle's law is also ve-rified in all countries; third, for all countries, some cross-price elasticities are both statistically significant and relatively large, which confirms the necessity of considering whole diets rather than only subsets of foods when analyzing policies to enhance the sustainability of food consumption patterns. Beyond those well-known regularities, however, the analysis indicates that demand relationships remain highly specific to each country.