Seminar

Globalisation and national trends in nutrition and health - a grouped fixed effects approach to inter-country heterogeneity

Lisa Oberlander (Paris School of Economics - INRA)

September 16, 2016, 11:00–12:30

Room MS003

Food Economics and Policy Seminar

Abstract

This paper estimates the effect of globalisation on nutritional components of the diet and health outcomes using a panel dataset of 70 countries spanning 42 years (1970-2011). Our key methodological contribution is the application of the grouped fixed effects estimator developed by Bonhomme and Manresa (2015), which enables us to better control for unobserved time-varying heterogeneity. Our results indicate that a one standard deviation increase in the index of social globalisation is associated with an increase of animal protein of about 20.4%. In contrast, economic globalisation has no effect on the composition of the diet. Moreover, we do not find significant effects on diabetes prevalence or mean Body Mass Index. Our findings indicate that social aspects of globalisation, such as food advertising, deserve greater attention in the nutrition transition discourse.