Effects of Governmental Intervention on Foodborne Disease Events: Evidence from China

Abstract

Foodborne disease events (FDEs) endanger residents’ health around the world, including China. Most countries have formulated food safety regulation policies, but the effects of governmental intervention (GI) on FDEs are still unclear. So, this paper purposes to explore the effects of GI on FDEs by using Chinese provincial panel data from 2011 to 2019. The results show that: (i) GI has a significant negative impact on FDEs. Ceteris paribus, FDEs decreased by 1.3% when government expenditure on FDEs increased by 1%. (ii) By strengthening food safety standards and guiding enterprises to offer safer food, government can further improve FDEs. (iii) However, GI has a strong negative externality. Although GI alleviates FDEs in local areas, it aggravates FDEs in other areas. (iv) Compared with the eastern and coastal areas, the effects of GI on FDEs in the central, western, and inland areas are more significant. GI is conducive to ensuring Chinese health and equity. Policymakers should pay attention to two tasks in food safety regulation. Firstly, they should continue to strengthen GI in food safety issues, enhance food safety certification, and strive to ensure food safety. Secondly, they should reinforce the co-governance of regional food safety issues and reduce the negative externality of GI.

Economic Growth, Income Inequality and Food Safety Risk

“…Control variables: Following Zhang et al, Yin et al and Zhang et al [ 11 , 12 , 13 ], we control the government regulation (the number of personnel in health supervision institutes (centers)), industrial structure (the output value of tertiary industry/the output value of secondary industry), food industry output value (FIV: the total output value of food enterprises above the scale), the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery (AFTV), Average Education level (Education level = 0 × illiterate + 6 × Number of primary school students + 9 × Number of junior high school students + 12 × Number of secondary vocational school students + 12 × Number of senior high school students + 15 × Number of junior college students + 16 × Number of university students + 19 × Number of graduate students), consumer price index (CPI), temperature and rainfall. In addition, we include providing and year fixed effects.…”

“…Food physical, chemical and microbial risks have been alleviated to a certain extent. Food safety risks have begun to decline [ 13 , 32 , 33 ]. Based on the above analysis, this paper proposes Hypothesis 1 (H1).…”

“…They proposed the food safety Kuznets curve hypothesis through econometric analysis of China's food safety situation [11,12]. However, Zhang et al find that the "inverted U-shaped" relationship between economic growth and food safety risk is not necessarily statistically significant [13]. Nowadays, Scholars have different views on the relationship between economic growth and food safety risk, and there is a relative lack of complete and systematic theoretical analysis.…”

“…al. and Zhang et al[11][12][13], we control the government regulation (the number of personnel in health supervision institutes (centers)), industrial structure (the output value of tertiary industry/the output value of secondary industry), food industry output value (…”

Effect of agricultural fiscal expenditures on agricultural carbon intensity in China

“…The meteorological data collected is from China's Climate Statistical platform (V3.0). To match the sample, we calculate the average provincial temperature, rainfall and sunshine in China by using the Barnes method (Zhang et al 2021d). The original data of other variables are from the China Statistical Yearbook and China Agricultural Yearbook.…”