Assessment of evaluations made to healthy eating policies in Europe: a review within the EATWELL Project

Objective: To identify and assess healthy eating policies at national level which have been evaluated in terms of their impact on awareness of healthy eating, food consumption, health outcome or cost/benefit. Design: Review of policy documents and their evaluations when available. Setting: European Member States. Subjects: One hundred and twenty-one policy documents revised, 107 retained. Results: Of the 107 selected interventions, twenty-two had been evaluated for their impact on awareness or knowledge and twenty-seven for their impact on consumption. Furthermore sixteen interventions provided an evaluation of health impact, while three actions specifically measured any cost/benefit ratio. The indicators used in these evaluations were in most cases not comparable. Evaluation was more often found for public information campaigns, regulation of meals at schools/canteens and nutrition education programmes. Conclusions: The study highlights the need not only to develop harmonized and verifiable procedures but also indicators for measuring effectiveness and success and for comparing between interventions and countries. EU policies are recommended to provide a set of indicators that may be measured consistently and regularly in all countries. Furthermore, public information campaigns should be accompanied by other interventions, as evaluations may show an impact on awareness and intention, but rarely on consumption patterns and health outcome.

Policies to promote healthy eating in Europe: a structured review of policies and their effectiveness

This review provides a classification of public policies to promote healthier eating as well as a structured mapping of existing measures in Europe. Complete coverage of alternative policy types was ensured by complementing the review with a selection of major interventions from outside Europe. Under the auspices of the Seventh Framework Programme's Eatwell Project, funded by the European Commission, researchers from five countries reviewed a representative selection of policy actions based on scientific papers, policy documents, grey literature, government websites, other policy reviews, and interviews with policy-makers. This work resulted in a list of 129 policy interventions, 121 of which were in Europe. For each type of policy, a critical review of its effectiveness was conducted, based on the evidence currently available. The results of this review indicate a need exists for a more systematic and accurate evaluation of government-level interventions as well as for a stronger focus on actual behavioral change rather than changes in attitude or intentions alone. The currently available evidence is very heterogeneous across policy types and is often incomplete.

Biofuel policies in the EU, US and Brazil

The development of biofuels has been one of the most visible and controversial manifestations of the use of biomass for energy. Biofuels policies in the EU, US and Brazil have been particularly important for the development of the industry in these three important markets. All three have used a variety of measures, including consumption or use mandates, tax incentives and import protection to promote the production and use of biofuels. Despite this, it is uncertain whether the EU will achieve its objective of a 10 per cent share for renewables in transport fuels by 2020. The US is also running into difficulties in meeting consumption mandates for biofuels. Questions are being raised about the continuation of tax credits and import protection. Brazil has liberalised its domestic ethanol market and adopted a more market-oriented approach to biofuels policy, but the management of domestic petroleum prices and the inter-relationship between the sugar market and ethanol production are important factors affecting domestic consumption and exports. In both the EU and the US an ongoing debate about the benefits of reliance on biofuels derived from food crops and concern about the efficacy of current biofuels policies may put their future in doubt.

The relationship between European Community agricultural Structural Policies and their implementation and agricultural succession and inheritance within Member States

This paper presents an overview of the European Union involvement in agricultural restructuring. By way of introduction it looks at the processes of farm replication operating in Europe and the forces behind them. It then considers the wider application of EU measures in each Member State and how they interrelate with the national property laws and social customs. In conclusion the paper appraises the restructuring policies by examining the balance between legitimising the concentration of property rights amongst a minority and the fragmentation of estates between the majority.

Family hardship and cultural values: child labor in Malian artisanal gold mining communities

This paper contributes to the debate on child labor in small-scale mining communities, focusing specifically on the situation in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the child labor now widespread in many of the region’s small-scale mining communities is a product of a combination of cultural issues, household-level poverty and rural livelihood diversification. Experiences from Komana West, a subsistence gold panning area in Southern Mali, are drawn upon to make this case. The findings suggest that the sector’s child labor “problem” is far more nuanced than international organizations and policymakers have diagnosed.

Inequality, intergenerational mobility and redistributive policies under endogenous information

This paper presents a dynamic model to study how different levels of information about the root determinants of wealth (luck versus effort) can impact inequality and intergenerational mobility through societal beliefs, individual choices and redistributive policies. To my knowledge, the model presented is the first dynamicmodel in which skills are stochastic and both beliefs and voted redistribution are determined endogenously. The model is able to explain a number of empirical facts. Large empirical evidence shows that the difference in the political support for redistribution appears to reflect differences in the social perceptions regarding the determinants of individual wealth and the underlying sources of income inequality. Moreover the beliefs about the determinants of wealth impact individual choices of effort and therefore the beliefs about the determinants of wealth impact inequality and mobility both through choices of effort and redistributive policies. The model generates multiple equilibria (US versus Europe-type) which may account for the observed features not only in terms of societal beliefs and redistribution but also in terms of perceived versus real mobility and inequality.

The legitimacy of foreign investors: individual attitudes toward the impact of multinational enterprises

Purpose – This article aims to analyze individual attitudes toward the impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on local businesses. These individual attitudes are important in understanding voters' preferences, which studies show to affect governmental policies. MNEs' market entry location decisions are conditioned by the host's political environment. Moreover, MNEs' attempts to attain legitimacy in their host contexts ultimately affect their bottom line, so how the public perceive MNEs matters. Design/methodology/approach – Using a large-scale data set, the paper carefully delineates between a set of potential mechanisms influencing individual attitudes to globalization in the context of individuals' attitudes toward the impact of MNEs on local businesses. Findings – The article demonstrates that there is remarkable heterogeneity and complexity in individual attitudes toward the impact of MNEs on local businesses and that these attitudes differ across regions and across countries. It is found that better educated individuals, those employed in the private sector, and those who do not have nationalistic tendencies are more likely to consider that MNEs are not harming local firms, while the opposite holds for those who are employed in “less skilled” occupations, such as those working in plants or in elementary occupations. The article also provides evidence that individuals' attitudes are determined by more than the labor market calculations these individuals might have. In fact, the socializing influence of education and the socializing impact of the individuals' type/sector of occupation also significantly determine the individual attitudes under study. Originality/value – This area of research remains substantially under-developed in the literature that analyzes individual attitudes toward globalization, which focuses on individual attitudes toward trade and immigration. Thus, the article not only aims to broaden the work on individual attitudes toward globalization, but it also aims to facilitate further discussion on the specific topic of individual attitudes toward MNEs.