Description:
This chapter addresses the analysis of markets for food products that are differentiated by safety characteristics. The first part of the paper surveys the broad array of issues that are involved in food safety and the regulations that have been devised to address them. The next sections of the paper consider the analysis of the demand and supply of safety-differentiated products and the implications of alternative information regimes for market equilibrium. The final section of the paper considers the measurement of benefits and costs of food safety regulations in the context of recent efforts at regulatory impact assessment.