Satoru Shimokawa

The labour market impact of body weight in China: a semiparametric analysis

While a positive wage effect of Body Mass Index (BMI) is widely observed in low-income developing countries, a negative wage effect of BMI is often observed in high-income developed countries. To fill the gap between these previous findings, we investigate the relationship between body weight and wages in transition economies. We focus on China, whose rapid economic growth of the 1990s was followed by a rapid increase in overweight and obesity while still experiencing significant food insecurity and underweight. we first use several parametric regression strategies to obtain a consistent estimate of the wage effects of weight. Second, we adopt a semiparametric partially linear model that allows for endogeneity of weight. Parametric regressions provide mixed results, and the sign and magnitude of their estimates are sensitive to the choice of samples and regression strategies. Semiparametric estimates provide evidence of a wage penalty for very heavy and thin persons among both men and women. The wage penalty is more significant among men than among women. Semiparametric results also indicate that parametric estimates can overstate and misrepresent the wage effects of weight for healthy weight persons due to their restrictive functional form assumptions.

Asymmetric Intrahousehold Allocation of Calories in China

To analyze intrahousehold calorie allocation, we propose a new framework that takes into account asymmetric consumption behavior due to liquidity constraints and loss aversion. We find that intrahousehold calorie allocation responds asymmetrically to expected declines and increases in household food availability in China. Compared with previous studies based on symmetric consumption behavior, our framework provides stronger evidence of gender bias in intrahousehold calorie allocation among children in urban areas and among elderly people in rural areas, and of demographic bias between girls and prime-age adults in both urban and rural areas. Implications for demographic targeting in nutrition programs are discussed. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.

Consumer preferences for US beef products: a meta-analysis

By conducting a meta-analysis with 57 observations collected from 20 primary studies, we systematically analyze heterogeneities in consumer preferences for the Country-of-Origin-Labeling (COOL) of US beef products. We find that consumers often prefer their domestic beef products due to patriotism. Consumers in Asian (mainly, Korea and Japan) and European countries (such as France, Germany and UK) are willing to pay significantly lower prices for US beef products compared to their domestic products; while the US consumers are willing to pay more for the domestic products than the imported ones.

Nutritional impacts of rising food prices in African countries: a review

This paper investigates the influences of food price spikes on nutritional outcomes in six African countries: DR Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. Drawing on the estimates of food demand elasticity with respect to food prices in previous studies, we constructed the elasticity of calorie and protein consumption with respect to food prices. We find that, while increasing cereal prices has the largest negative influences on both calorie and protein consumption in all the countries, the magnitude of the influences may differ by regions and the country’s dietary patterns. The negative influences are particularly large in rural areas and in the countries whose diets highly depend on a single staple cereal while small in the countries whose diets have alternative staple foods. Our findings highlight the importance of stabilizing cereal prices to reduce calorie deficiency while it may not be enough to improve protein deficiency.