Improving Food Quality through Institutional Innovations: Using a Free‐Rider Approach for Collective Action

Ernst-August Nuppenau

Abstract


This paper outlines how a team work approach, recently suggested in institutional economics to overcome the problem of externalities, can be used to promote better food quality. Cost sharing as “team work” is considered a novel institution to improve food quality by giving incentives to overcome the public good character of quality. We translate the approach from negative to positive externalities. Hereby: (1) We make a reference to the current state of the discussion on how food quality depends on efforts of a food industry to get a better image and discuss how much need there is to improve quality. (2) An outline of a mathematical approach of a “team work” is presented in the provision of quality as a positive externality  and (3) the approach is adapted to a likely team building effort in a food industry. Finally some remarks are made how to stimulate a process of team building and the role of a government is addressed. At the core of the paper we see the argument that free riding on quality can be avoided if collective actions or team building processes occur in a community. A team is modeled as partnership of producers in which costs for quality improvement are shared.


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.18461/pfsd.2010.1006

ISSN 2194-511X

 

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