Developing a Research Agenda for the Analysis of Product Supply: A Response to the Recent Commentaries

We read the responses to our paper “How Neoliberalism Is Shaping the Supply of Unhealthy Commodities and What This Means for NCD Prevention”1 with great interest. The different disciplinary perspectives expanded and deepened our analysis of the relationship between neoliberalism and the supply of unhealthy commodities. Our effort to articulate the role of ideas, specifically the category of ideas associated with the neoliberal paradigm, and the relationship to institutions that in turn shape product supply, is to point to one aspect of the system that is often neglected, that of policy paradigms. Adding analysis of the power of economic elites and commercial interests, the need for consideration of locality, particularity and situating products in the political economy that generates them, the explicit consideration of alternative economic paradigms designed to achieve societal (rather than narrowly defined economic) goals, and conceptualization of actors and institutions within complex adaptative systems serves as a protection from reductionist thinking. This aligns with our own recognition that the neoliberal paradigm itself is one of a number of other factors including the power of economic elites and commercial interests to mobilize strategies that shape policy and public perception.