Food, Financial Crises, and Complex Derivatives: A Tale of High Stakes Innovation and Diversification

Vera Songwe ()
Additional contact information
Vera Songwe: World Bank

World Bank - Economic Premise, 2011, issue 69, 1-9

Abstract: The 2008 food price crisis was an integral part of the financial crisis. In fact, the food price crisis was the second crisis in a chain of events that began in 2007 with the mortgage crisis, and culminated in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Contrary to what was generally believed in 2008, developing countries, particularly food-importing countries, were part of the early wave of the financial crisis via food price increases, and later suffered another wave via the real sector. The events leading up to the food crisis were global and complex in nature. As a result, as the G-20 discusses solutions to the financial crisis, any new framework must include developing countries, especially low-income countries. In addition, developing countries, especially in Africa, must pay close attention to the work of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and its recommendations on financial market reform, and over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives in particular, because these reforms will have important consequences for their housing, food, fuel, financial markets, and ultimately their growth and poverty reduction objectives.

Keywords: food prices; food price crisis; financial crisis; derivatives; G-20; OTC; Africa; Financial Stability Board; developing countires; poverty reduction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F4 F42 F44 G24 O19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPREMNET/Resources/EP69.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:wbk:prmecp:ep69

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in World Bank - Economic Premise from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael Jelenic ().