Do Radioactive Spills from the Fukushima Disaster Have Any Influence on the Japanese Seafood Market?

Hiroki Wakamatsu and Tsutomu Miyata

Marine Resource Economics, 2016, vol. 31, issue 1, 27 - 45

Abstract: We investigated whether the 2011 spill of radioactive materials from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean had a negative impact on the demand for cod and pollock in the wholesale markets of Japan. A structural break test detected several breaks, including the Fukushima disaster, and successfully eliminated the impact of the other shocks identified in our analysis. A system of demand equation models, which take into account the structural breaks, indicated that the spills had a significantly negative impact on the demand for cod. Our results suggest that the amount of radiation detected in cod products negatively affected Japanese demand for cod and positively affected demand for pollock, but did not affect their prices. In addition, we found that consumers' current concerns about radioactive spills positively affect cod and pollock markets. We concluded that radioactive spills harm the markets, but the impact is negligible.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/683686 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/683686 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:mresec:doi:10.1086/683686

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Marine Resource Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().