Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation and Poverty

Kym Anderson, Maros Ivanic and Will Martin

No 332389, Conference papers from Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project

Abstract: The analysis in this paper first considers the impact on world food prices of the changes in protection for staple foods during the 2008 world food price crisis—changes that were generally designed to partially insulate domestic markets from changes in international prices. We find that this insulation substantially increased world prices for key food crops such as rice, wheat, maize and oilseeds. The net effect was to reduce domestic prices in only a few developing countries, while domestic prices in many other countries were increased despite their attempts to insulate against the price rises. We estimate that the overall reduction in import protection or increase in export restraints in developing countries reduced the extent to which global poverty would otherwise have risen. However, the actual poverty-reducing impact of insulation is much less than its apparent impact, and there are now domestic policy instruments that almost certainly could reduce the impact of higher food prices on the poor more efficiently than variations in trade restrictions.

Keywords: Food Security and Poverty; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2013
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https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/332389/files/6375.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation, and Poverty (2014)
Working Paper: Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation, and Poverty (2013)
Working Paper: Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation and Poverty (2013)
Working Paper: Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation, and Poverty (2013)
Working Paper: Food price spikes, price insulation, and poverty (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:pugtwp:332389

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