Does Government Intervention Ensure Food Safety? Evidence from China

Hongfeng Zhang, Chengyun Sun, Lu Huang and Hongyun Si
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Hongfeng Zhang: School of Public Administration and Policy, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan 250014, China
Chengyun Sun: School of Economics, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan 250014, China
Lu Huang: School of Economics, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan 250014, China
Hongyun Si: School of Public Administration and Policy, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan 250014, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 7, 1-22

Abstract: Food safety is related to public health, social welfare, and human survival, all of which are important and pressing areas of concern all over the world. The government plays an increasingly important role in the supervision of food safety. The role of the government, however, is also controversial. Using provincial panel data of China from 2005 to 2015, the present study intends to shed light on the associations between government intervention and food safety performance under two scenarios of local government—competition and noncompetition. This will be accomplished through an exploratory spatial data analysis and a spatial econometric model. The results reveal negative associations between food safety performance and government intervention without considering local government competition. As was also observed, government intervention not only inhibits the improvement of food safety in the region, but also has a negative spatial spillover effect on food safety in neighboring provinces. This is the result after considering government competition, thus, showing the competitive strategic interaction of the “race to the bottom”. Further analysis reveals that, if geographically similar regions are selected as reference objects, the food safety performance of each province will have a stronger tendency to compete for the better. If regions with similar economic development levels are selected as reference objects, food safety performance will have a stronger tendency to compete for the worse. This work provides new evidence for the relationships between government intervention and food safety, and, also, proposes some insightful implications for policymakers for governing food safety.

Keywords: government intervention; food safety; spatial econometrics; local government competition; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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