What is it about?

The purchase of local food is often argued to stimulate local economies through multiplier effects : e.g the value of new outputs and the additional employment and income generated. We synthesize opposing findings related to the multiplier effects of local food.

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Why is it important?

Four types of multipliers were analyzed: output, employment, income, and value-added multipliers We find that the existence of employment and income multipliers seems to be more evident, while the impacts of output- and value-added multipliers depend more on the actual context.

Perspectives

Future research about the economic impact of local food should address the issue of locality from an economic point of view, i.e., whether the inputs of production are themselves local; otherwise, effects might be significantly overestimated. Although there is a diversity of applicable methods, the potential for reverse causality regarding whether local food systems are the consequences or drivers of local economic development should be addressed in the future

Professor Imre Ferto
Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences: Budapest

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This page is a summary of: The Multiplier Effects of Food Relocalization: A Systematic Review, Sustainability, April 2020, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/su12093524.
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