Picking up where we left off yesterday…
In the Monday afternoon poster session, GFAR PhD student, Rio L. Maligalig, presented her poster titled “Farmers’ preferences for varietal trait improvements: The case of rice farmers in Nueva Ecija, Philippines”.
In her study, Rio used the Investment Game Application (a newly developed game for eliciting trait preferences) to examine which rice variety traits farmers would prioritise for improvement if given the chance to allocate research funds.
Dr Sharmina Ahmed, whose attendance at the AAEA Annual Meeting was supported by the 2017 AAEA-AARES Heading North Award, presented her PhD student Anna Finizio’s poster titled “Understanding the Determinants of Diet Diversity and Healthy Eating Among Urban Households in the Pacific”. This project explores how food market environments and socio-economic factors influence the diet quality of urban Fijians. Pacific Island Countries, including Fiji, are experiencing obesity epidemics resulting in high rates of diet-related non-communicable diseases and little research has focused on understanding the drivers of diet-related health issues in these countries.
Another GFAR PhD student, Jesmin Ara Rupa, presented the poster titled “Food Market Modernisation and Diet-related Health Outcomes: Evidence from Urban Vietnam”. Dr Di Zeng and Prof. Wendy Umberger are co-authors on this work.
The poster showcased an empirical assessment of the possible obesogenic impacts of supermarkets among Vietnamese urban consumers using a large urban consumer survey in Hanoi and in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The endogeneity of supermarket food expenditure was corrected for using an instrumental variable approach, and possible impact heterogeneity was assessed. While no overall impact was found on either adults or children, significant sub-sample impacts exist for girls aged 6-9 and girls from upper middle income households in terms of changes in both BMI z-scores and overweight status. These results attracted several researchers from the conference who came to Jesmin for further discussion of policy implications to address or prevent diet-related diseases in other developing countries like Vietnam.
Check in again tomorrow for the final instalment of the 2017 AAEA blog series!
