Can a cereal export ban affect a net food-importing economy? The case of Ethiopia

Emerta Asaminew Aragie, Jean Balié, Emiliano Magrini and Cristian Morales Opazo

No 332747, Conference papers from Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project

Abstract: Most governments implemented policies designed to offset the expected negative effects of high food prices of 2007/08 and 2010/11. Among other interventions, net food-importing countries, such as Ethiopia, have introduced a cereal export ban. Several studies have investigated the macroeconomic impacts of export bans on large net exporters of grains. However, only very few country case studies have examined the economy-wide and distributional effects combined. Further, there is a lack of rigorous studies that disentangle the net impact of a cereal export ban when an economy is jointly affected by an external price shock. This paper evaluates the impacts of a border price shock followed by a cereal export ban, and cereal export ban alone in a typical net food-importing country, Ethiopia. Results show that border price shocks can have negative production and supply effects on food, causing strong welfare losses on urban households. However, an export ban can stabilise domestic food prices in the short-run, but cannot erase the price hike. Moreover, the ban discourages cereal production, and reduces rural households’ welfare. As expected, a cereal export ban alone can push domestic food prices down and lead to welfare loss for rural households and the society as a whole while urban households benefit.

Keywords: Crop Production/Industries; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/332747/files/8006.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:pugtwp:332747

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Conference papers from Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().