Bhavani Shankar
Biographic Data
| ID | 5497375 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bhavani Shankar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bhavani |
| FAMILY NAME | Shankar |
| SIGNATURE | SHANKAR B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8102-321X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The interplay between the market food environment and barriers to healthy diets for women in rural Bihar, India
Mapping coexisting hotspots of multidimensional food market (in)accessibility and climate vulnerability
With the increasing likelihood of agricultural production failures under a warmer global climate, the importance of markets in providing access to nutrient-dense foods (NDFs) through trade is predicted to grow. However, regions with relatively poor access to markets and supporting infrastructures (e.g. roads and storage facilities) are potentially ill-equipped to deal with both short-term hydrometeorological hazards such as droughts and floods, a…
Economic inequality in malnutrition: A global systematic review and meta-analysis
Economic evaluation of nutrition interventions: Does one size fit all
Changes in take-home aerated soft drink purchases in urban India after the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST): An interrupted time series analysis
In India, a country currently with low aerated drink consumption, the implementation of GST was not associated with a reduction in aerated drink purchase in urban settings. Due to the lack of accurate and sufficiently detailed price data, it is not possible to say whether this finding is driven by prices not changing sufficiently. Furthermore, the impact of GST reform on industry practice (reformulation, marketing) and individual behaviour choice…
Can fruit and vegetable aggregation systems better balance improved producer livelihoods with more equitable distribution
The need for food systems to generate sustainable and equitable benefits for all is a global imperative. However, whilst ample evidence exists linking smallholder farmer coordination and aggregation (i.e. the collective transport and marketing of produce on behalf of multiple farmers) to improved market participation and farmer incomes, the extent to which interventions that aim to improve farmer market engagement may co-develop equitable consume…
The impact of gender equity in agriculture on nutritional status, diets, and household food security: A mixed-methods systematic review
Trading water: Virtual water flows through interstate cereal trade in India
Cereals are an important component of the Indian diet, providing 47% of the daily dietary energy intake. Dwindling groundwater reserves in India especially in major cereal-growing regions are an increasing challenge to national food supply. An improved understanding of interstate cereal trade can help to identify potential risks to national food security. Here, we quantify the trade between Indian states of five major cereals and the associated t…
International trade, dietary change, and cardiovascular disease health outcomes: Import tariff reform using an integrated macroeconomic, environmental and health modelling framework for Thailand
United Nations (UN) member states have, since 2011, worked to address the emerging global NCD crisis, but progress has, so far, been insufficient. Food trade policy is recognised to have the potential to impact certain major diet-related health and environmental outcomes. We study the potential for using import tariff protection as a health and environmental policy instrument. Specifically, we apply a rigorous and consistent Macroeconomic-Environ…
Analysing the policy space for the promotion of healthy, sustainable edible oil consumption in India
Objective: To identify opportunities and challenges for the promotion of healthy, sustainable oil consumption in India. Design: We use a framework for policy space analysis which distinguishes between policy context, process and characteristics. Setting: We focus on the Indian edible oils sector and on factors shaping the policy space at a national level. Participants: The study is based on the analysis of policy documents and semi-structured int…
Palm oil and dietary change: Application of an integrated macroeconomic, environmental, demographic, and health modelling framework for Thailand
Palm oil is a cooking oil and food ingredient in widespread use in the global food system. However, as a highly saturated fat, palm oil consumption has been associated with negative effects on cardiovascular health, while large scale oil palm production has been linked to deforestation. We construct an innovative fully integrated Macroeconomic-Environmental-Demographic-health (MED-health) model to undertake integrated health, environmental, and e…
Buy or make? Agricultural production diversity, markets and dietary diversity in Afghanistan
Increasing on-farm production diversity and improving markets are recognized as ways to improve the dietary diversity of smallholders. Using instrumental variable methods to account for endogeneity, we study the interplay of production diversity, markets and diets in the context of seasonality in Afghanistan. We confirm an important seasonal dimension to the interplay. Improved crop diversity over the year is positively associated with dietary di…
Agricultural inputs and nutrition in South Asia
There are a number of potential pathways leading from agricultural input decisions to nutrition outcomes of farm households. These have special resonance in less developed areas of South Asia given widespread undernutrition problems, market failures and restricted access to land and other key assets and inputs, as well as ongoing debates around the implications that the green revolution has held for nutritional outcomes. A number of initiatives, …
Rural food security, subsistence agriculture, and seasonality
Many of the world's food-insecure and undernourished people are smallholder farmers in developing countries. This is especially true in Africa. There is an urgent need to make smallholder agriculture and food systems more nutrition-sensitive. African farm households are known to consume a sizeable part of what they produce at home. Less is known about how much subsistence agriculture actually contributes to household diets, and how this contribut…
Policies for healthy and sustainable edible oil consumption: A stakeholder analysis for Thailand
Objective Palm oil is a cheap and versatile edible oil in widespread use as a food ingredient that has been linked to negative health and environmental outcomes. The current study aimed to understand the prospects for future health-focused policy development to limit food use of palm oil and promote a greater diversity of oils in Thailand’s food system. Design Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with a range of stakeholders. The in…
Breaking Habits: The Effect of the French Vending Machine Ban on School Snacking and Sugar Intakes
This paper estimates the effect of the 2005 vending machine ban in French secondary schools on nutrient intakes and on the frequency of morning snacking at school. Using data before and after the ban, and exploiting the discontinuity associated with the age-dependent exposure to the ban, we specify a difference-in-differences regression discontinuity design. Since the relationship between age-at-interview and school level is not precise, we intro…
Explaining Cross-State Disparities in Child Nutrition in Rural India
What drives the large disparities in height-for-age distributions among Indian states - variation in observed nutrition-related endowments, such as wealth or maternal education, or differential strengths of relationships across states between endowments and height-for-age? We explore this question by comparing a set of states with poor nutrition outcomes with the benchmark of Tamil Nadu, a good performer. Applying counterfactual decomposition met…
Rural-urban disparities in child nutrition in Bangladesh and Nepal
Public health interventions aimed at overcoming rural-urban disparities in child nutrition outcomes need to focus principally on bridging gaps in socio-economic endowments of rural and urban households and improving the quality of rural infrastructure. Improving child nutrition outcomes in developing countries does not call for fundamentally different approaches to public health interventions in rural and urban areas
Impact assessment of agricultural research, institutional innovation, and technology adoption: Introduction to the special section
Policies to promote healthy eating in Europe: A structured review of policies and their effectiveness
This review provides a classification of public policies to promote healthier eating as well as a structured mapping of existing measures in Europe. Complete coverage of alternative policy types was ensured by complementing the review with a selection of major interventions from outside Europe. Under the auspices of the Seventh Framework Programme's Eatwell Project, funded by the European Commission, researchers from five countries reviewed a rep…
Assessment of evaluations made to healthy eating policies in Europe: A review within the Eatwell Project
Objective To identify and assess healthy eating policies at national level which have been evaluated in terms of their impact on awareness of healthy eating, food consumption, health outcome or cost/benefit. Design Review of policy documents and their evaluations when available. Setting European Member States. Subjects One hundred and twenty-one policy documents revised, 107 retained. Results Of the 107 selected interventions, twenty-two had been…
Animal disease and livestock-keeper livelihoods in Southern Cambodia
Recently, a debate has emerged on whether Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), an animal disease that hasattracted much livestock policy attention and resources in developing countries, is of any great consequenceto the poor. This study investigates this issue with a case study of livestock-raising households inCambodia following disease outbreaks. It studies the assets, livelihood activities and income sources ofthe households and analyses the impacts,…
A Case Study of a Contract Farming Chain Involving Supermarkets and Smallholders in Thailand
This study explores the implications of supermarket expansion in the developing world for actors, particularly small-scale farmers, along the supply chains, by examining a case from Thailand. Supermarkets exert monopsonistic power by pushing a range of processing and marketing costs on to suppliers and instituting a short-term tendering process among suppliers. The scale of the farming operation is not a barrier to entering the chain, but importa…
Determinants of fruit and vegetable intake in England: A re-examination based on quantile regression
Objective To examine the sociodemographic determinants of fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption in England and determine the differential effects of socio-economic variables at various parts of the intake distribution, with a special focus on severely inadequate intakes. Design Quantile regression, expressing F&V intake as a function of sociodemographic variables, is employed. Here, quantile regression flexibly allows variables such as ethnicity …
Profits, supply and HYV adoption in Bangladesh
The adoption of HYVs (High Yielding Varieties), for increased farm profitability, and the accelerated supply of cereals are important objectives for Bangladesh agriculture. In this paper, we have investigated the manner in which price and non-price factor affect these three criteria, based upon a model of rational variety choice. The model is empirically implemented using translog profit functions and a switching regression framework, and applied…
Explaining Cross-State Disparities in Child Nutrition in Rural India
What drives the large disparities in height-for-age distributions among Indian states - variation in observed nutrition-related endowments, such as wealth or maternal education, or differential strengths of relationships across states between endowments and height-for-age? We explore this question by comparing a set of states with poor nutrition outcomes with the benchmark of Tamil Nadu, a good performer. Applying counterfactual decomposition met…
An assessment of the potential consumption impacts of WHO dietary norms in OECD countries
Buy or make? Agricultural production diversity, markets and dietary diversity in Afghanistan
Increasing on-farm production diversity and improving markets are recognized as ways to improve the dietary diversity of smallholders. Using instrumental variable methods to account for endogeneity, we study the interplay of production diversity, markets and diets in the context of seasonality in Afghanistan. We confirm an important seasonal dimension to the interplay. Improved crop diversity over the year is positively associated with dietary di…
Agricultural inputs and nutrition in South Asia
There are a number of potential pathways leading from agricultural input decisions to nutrition outcomes of farm households. These have special resonance in less developed areas of South Asia given widespread undernutrition problems, market failures and restricted access to land and other key assets and inputs, as well as ongoing debates around the implications that the green revolution has held for nutritional outcomes. A number of initiatives, …
Breaking Habits: The Effect of the French Vending Machine Ban on School Snacking and Sugar Intakes
This paper estimates the effect of the 2005 vending machine ban in French secondary schools on nutrient intakes and on the frequency of morning snacking at school. Using data before and after the ban, and exploiting the discontinuity associated with the age-dependent exposure to the ban, we specify a difference-in-differences regression discontinuity design. Since the relationship between age-at-interview and school level is not precise, we intro…
Palm oil and dietary change: Application of an integrated macroeconomic, environmental, demographic, and health modelling framework for Thailand
Palm oil is a cooking oil and food ingredient in widespread use in the global food system. However, as a highly saturated fat, palm oil consumption has been associated with negative effects on cardiovascular health, while large scale oil palm production has been linked to deforestation. We construct an innovative fully integrated Macroeconomic-Environmental-Demographic-health (MED-health) model to undertake integrated health, environmental, and e…
Profits, supply and HYV adoption in Bangladesh
The adoption of HYVs (High Yielding Varieties), for increased farm profitability, and the accelerated supply of cereals are important objectives for Bangladesh agriculture. In this paper, we have investigated the manner in which price and non-price factor affect these three criteria, based upon a model of rational variety choice. The model is empirically implemented using translog profit functions and a switching regression framework, and applied…
Can fruit and vegetable aggregation systems better balance improved producer livelihoods with more equitable distribution
The need for food systems to generate sustainable and equitable benefits for all is a global imperative. However, whilst ample evidence exists linking smallholder farmer coordination and aggregation (i.e. the collective transport and marketing of produce on behalf of multiple farmers) to improved market participation and farmer incomes, the extent to which interventions that aim to improve farmer market engagement may co-develop equitable consume…
Impact assessment of agricultural research, institutional innovation, and technology adoption: Introduction to the special section
A Case Study of a Contract Farming Chain Involving Supermarkets and Smallholders in Thailand
This study explores the implications of supermarket expansion in the developing world for actors, particularly small-scale farmers, along the supply chains, by examining a case from Thailand. Supermarkets exert monopsonistic power by pushing a range of processing and marketing costs on to suppliers and instituting a short-term tendering process among suppliers. The scale of the farming operation is not a barrier to entering the chain, but importa…
Drought risk in Nicaragua: A crop, region and technology-specific empirical evaluation
Nicaraguan agriculture is largely rainfed. Drought risk is endemic, consistently wiping out large proportions of potential crop production. An insurance programme that would shift drought risk from farmers could therefore have significant welfare effects. A first step towards analysing drought insurance is the establishment of the empirical connection between rainfall levels and the risk of low returns to crop production. Having reviewed the natu…
An assessment of the potential consumption impacts of WHO dietary norms in OECD countries
The Decline of Bt Cotton in KwaZulu-Natal: Technology and Institutions
Determinants of fruit and vegetable intake in England: A re-examination based on quantile regression
Objective To examine the sociodemographic determinants of fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption in England and determine the differential effects of socio-economic variables at various parts of the intake distribution, with a special focus on severely inadequate intakes. Design Quantile regression, expressing F&V intake as a function of sociodemographic variables, is employed. Here, quantile regression flexibly allows variables such as ethnicity …
Profits, supply and HYV adoption in Bangladesh
The adoption of HYVs (High Yielding Varieties), for increased farm profitability, and the accelerated supply of cereals are important objectives for Bangladesh agriculture. In this paper, we have investigated the manner in which price and non-price factor affect these three criteria, based upon a model of rational variety choice. The model is empirically implemented using translog profit functions and a switching regression framework, and applied…
A Case Study of a Contract Farming Chain Involving Supermarkets and Smallholders in Thailand
This study explores the implications of supermarket expansion in the developing world for actors, particularly small-scale farmers, along the supply chains, by examining a case from Thailand. Supermarkets exert monopsonistic power by pushing a range of processing and marketing costs on to suppliers and instituting a short-term tendering process among suppliers. The scale of the farming operation is not a barrier to entering the chain, but importa…
Policies to promote healthy eating in Europe: A structured review of policies and their effectiveness
This review provides a classification of public policies to promote healthier eating as well as a structured mapping of existing measures in Europe. Complete coverage of alternative policy types was ensured by complementing the review with a selection of major interventions from outside Europe. Under the auspices of the Seventh Framework Programme's Eatwell Project, funded by the European Commission, researchers from five countries reviewed a rep…
Assessment of evaluations made to healthy eating policies in Europe: A review within the Eatwell Project
Objective To identify and assess healthy eating policies at national level which have been evaluated in terms of their impact on awareness of healthy eating, food consumption, health outcome or cost/benefit. Design Review of policy documents and their evaluations when available. Setting European Member States. Subjects One hundred and twenty-one policy documents revised, 107 retained. Results Of the 107 selected interventions, twenty-two had been…
Animal disease and livestock-keeper livelihoods in Southern Cambodia
Recently, a debate has emerged on whether Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), an animal disease that hasattracted much livestock policy attention and resources in developing countries, is of any great consequenceto the poor. This study investigates this issue with a case study of livestock-raising households inCambodia following disease outbreaks. It studies the assets, livelihood activities and income sources ofthe households and analyses the impacts,…
Rural-urban disparities in child nutrition in Bangladesh and Nepal
Public health interventions aimed at overcoming rural-urban disparities in child nutrition outcomes need to focus principally on bridging gaps in socio-economic endowments of rural and urban households and improving the quality of rural infrastructure. Improving child nutrition outcomes in developing countries does not call for fundamentally different approaches to public health interventions in rural and urban areas
Impact assessment of agricultural research, institutional innovation, and technology adoption: Introduction to the special section
Explaining Cross-State Disparities in Child Nutrition in Rural India
What drives the large disparities in height-for-age distributions among Indian states - variation in observed nutrition-related endowments, such as wealth or maternal education, or differential strengths of relationships across states between endowments and height-for-age? We explore this question by comparing a set of states with poor nutrition outcomes with the benchmark of Tamil Nadu, a good performer. Applying counterfactual decomposition met…
Rural food security, subsistence agriculture, and seasonality
Many of the world's food-insecure and undernourished people are smallholder farmers in developing countries. This is especially true in Africa. There is an urgent need to make smallholder agriculture and food systems more nutrition-sensitive. African farm households are known to consume a sizeable part of what they produce at home. Less is known about how much subsistence agriculture actually contributes to household diets, and how this contribut…
Policies for healthy and sustainable edible oil consumption: A stakeholder analysis for Thailand
Objective Palm oil is a cheap and versatile edible oil in widespread use as a food ingredient that has been linked to negative health and environmental outcomes. The current study aimed to understand the prospects for future health-focused policy development to limit food use of palm oil and promote a greater diversity of oils in Thailand’s food system. Design Eighteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with a range of stakeholders. The in…
Breaking Habits: The Effect of the French Vending Machine Ban on School Snacking and Sugar Intakes
This paper estimates the effect of the 2005 vending machine ban in French secondary schools on nutrient intakes and on the frequency of morning snacking at school. Using data before and after the ban, and exploiting the discontinuity associated with the age-dependent exposure to the ban, we specify a difference-in-differences regression discontinuity design. Since the relationship between age-at-interview and school level is not precise, we intro…
Agricultural inputs and nutrition in South Asia
There are a number of potential pathways leading from agricultural input decisions to nutrition outcomes of farm households. These have special resonance in less developed areas of South Asia given widespread undernutrition problems, market failures and restricted access to land and other key assets and inputs, as well as ongoing debates around the implications that the green revolution has held for nutritional outcomes. A number of initiatives, …
International trade, dietary change, and cardiovascular disease health outcomes: Import tariff reform using an integrated macroeconomic, environmental and health modelling framework for Thailand
United Nations (UN) member states have, since 2011, worked to address the emerging global NCD crisis, but progress has, so far, been insufficient. Food trade policy is recognised to have the potential to impact certain major diet-related health and environmental outcomes. We study the potential for using import tariff protection as a health and environmental policy instrument. Specifically, we apply a rigorous and consistent Macroeconomic-Environ…
Analysing the policy space for the promotion of healthy, sustainable edible oil consumption in India
Objective: To identify opportunities and challenges for the promotion of healthy, sustainable oil consumption in India. Design: We use a framework for policy space analysis which distinguishes between policy context, process and characteristics. Setting: We focus on the Indian edible oils sector and on factors shaping the policy space at a national level. Participants: The study is based on the analysis of policy documents and semi-structured int…
Palm oil and dietary change: Application of an integrated macroeconomic, environmental, demographic, and health modelling framework for Thailand
Palm oil is a cooking oil and food ingredient in widespread use in the global food system. However, as a highly saturated fat, palm oil consumption has been associated with negative effects on cardiovascular health, while large scale oil palm production has been linked to deforestation. We construct an innovative fully integrated Macroeconomic-Environmental-Demographic-health (MED-health) model to undertake integrated health, environmental, and e…
Buy or make? Agricultural production diversity, markets and dietary diversity in Afghanistan
Increasing on-farm production diversity and improving markets are recognized as ways to improve the dietary diversity of smallholders. Using instrumental variable methods to account for endogeneity, we study the interplay of production diversity, markets and diets in the context of seasonality in Afghanistan. We confirm an important seasonal dimension to the interplay. Improved crop diversity over the year is positively associated with dietary di…
The impact of gender equity in agriculture on nutritional status, diets, and household food security: A mixed-methods systematic review
Trading water: Virtual water flows through interstate cereal trade in India
Cereals are an important component of the Indian diet, providing 47% of the daily dietary energy intake. Dwindling groundwater reserves in India especially in major cereal-growing regions are an increasing challenge to national food supply. An improved understanding of interstate cereal trade can help to identify potential risks to national food security. Here, we quantify the trade between Indian states of five major cereals and the associated t…
Economic inequality in malnutrition: A global systematic review and meta-analysis
Economic evaluation of nutrition interventions: Does one size fit all
Changes in take-home aerated soft drink purchases in urban India after the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST): An interrupted time series analysis
In India, a country currently with low aerated drink consumption, the implementation of GST was not associated with a reduction in aerated drink purchase in urban settings. Due to the lack of accurate and sufficiently detailed price data, it is not possible to say whether this finding is driven by prices not changing sufficiently. Furthermore, the impact of GST reform on industry practice (reformulation, marketing) and individual behaviour choice…
Economics (19 works) · Business (17 works) · Agriculture (12 works) · Geography (12 works) · Agricultural economics (10 works) · Child Nutrition and Water Access (10 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Biology (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Environmental health (7 works)