Rising food prices, food price volatility, and political unrest

Marc Bellemare

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Do food prices cause political unrest? Throughout history, riots appear to have frequently broken out as a consequence of high food prices. This paper studies the impact of food prices on political unrest using monthly data on food prices at the international level. Because food prices and political unrest are jointly determined, the incidence of natural disasters in a given month is used in an attempt to identify the causal relationship between food prices and political unrest. Empirical results indicate that between January 1990 and January 2011, food price increases have led to increased political unrest, whereas food price volatility has been associated with decreases in political unrest. These findings are consistent with those of the applied microeconomics literature on the welfare impacts of food prices.

Keywords: Food Prices; Price Volatility; Political Unrest; Food Riots (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 O11 O13 Q11 Q34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-06-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:31888

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