A small-open-economy model is developed to examine how the method of food aid disbursement affects labor employment, food security and aggregate welfare, in recipient countries, in an environment in which private sector firms pay efficiency wages to induce effort. Two forms of food aid delivery are considered: first is project food aid, under which food aid is used to finance infrastructure development and consumers are required to participate in public projects in order to receive food aid; the second is non-project food aid, which we use to capture all forms of food aid distributed to consumers free of charge. The model suggests that, when food aid is used to finance infrastructure development, it has no labor disincentive effects in the food industry, increases food security and decreases the level of unemployment in the recipient country. When food aid is distributed to consumers free of charge, however, the model predicts that it creates labor disincentive effects in the food industry, increases the unemployment level and decreases food security. Under both methods of distribution, the effect of food aid on aggregate welfare is ambiguous. Empirical results provide suggestive evidence for the hypothesis that project food aid increases food security while non-project food aid decreases food security.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Bank of Canada in its series Working Papers with number
98-1.
Find related papers by JEL classification: J4 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets Q1 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)