Food Riots: An Analysis of Price Movements of Essential Commodities 1971-83 with Tools for Policy Analysis

Krishnayya J G

IIMA Working Papers from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department

Abstract: Data Analysis techniques must be appropriate to the purpose of the analysis. Policy analysis, in particular, requires analytic techniques which are parsimonious and robust. Data available on the prices of 22 essential commodities in May 1971 and in December 1973 was subjected to analysis with a view to extracting information on the geographical pattern of price changes. The pattern reveals (a) that wheat behaved differently from all other commodities in 1973, (b) that a concentration of price pressure developed on Ahmedabad and Bombay and away from Delhi and Calcutta, (c) that unexpectedly small price increases took place in two commodities (rice and wheat) in Kanpur. The tools used were Information Theory – leading to a measure of “uneveness”, and Cluster Analysis, leading to a simple Guttman scale.

Date: 1974-04-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:iim:iimawp:wp00105

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IIMA Working Papers from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().