IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/iatrtp/142732.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Managing High and Volatile Food Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Martin, William J.

Abstract

The recent period of high and volatile food prices has cast doubt on many longstanding assumptions such as the inevitability of declining real food prices, and brought to an end a long period of food price stability. Some of the key driving forces appear to have been declines in yield growth for major commodities and the rapid growth of biofuels. Both high and volatile food prices are justly causes for concern. Key elements of the cure for high food prices include a strong focus on agricultural research and development, as well as rural development more generally, and a reconsideration of the role of biofuels. The best cures for food price volatility aim to reduce it by improving market information and reducing output volatility. Social safety nets are the best policy for coping with its effects, while the widely-used trade and storage policy measures have many complex and uncertain effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin, William J., 2012. "Managing High and Volatile Food Prices," Trade Issues Papers 142732, International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:iatrtp:142732
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.142732
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/142732/files/IATRC_TPI2012-6_Martin_final.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.142732?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus Deaton & Guy Laroque, 1992. "On the Behaviour of Commodity Prices," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 1-23.
    2. Stephan Pfaffenzeller & Paul Newbold & Anthony Rayner, 2007. "A Short Note on Updating the Grilli and Yang Commodity Price Index," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 21(1), pages 151-163.
    3. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 2008. "The Effect of Monetary Policy on Real Commodity Prices," NBER Chapters, in: Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, pages 291-333, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Ke Tang & Wei Xiong, 2012. "Index Investment and the Financialization of Commodities," Financial Analysts Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(6), pages 54-74, November.
    5. Ivanic, Maros & Martin, Will, 2008. "Implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low-income countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4594, The World Bank.
    6. de Janvry, Alain & Fafchamps, M. & Sadoulet, Elisabeth, 1991. "Peasant Household Behavior with Missing Markets: Some Paradoxes Explain," CUDARE Working Papers 198579, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    7. Christophe Gouel & Sébastien Jean, 2015. "Optimal Food Price Stabilization in a Small Open Developing Country," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(1), pages 72-101.
    8. World Bank, 2012. "Responding to Higher and More Volatile World Food Prices," World Bank Publications - Reports 12950, The World Bank Group.
    9. Bassam Fattouh, Lutz Kilian, and Lavan Mahadeva, 2013. "The Role of Speculation in Oil Markets: What Have We Learned So Far?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    10. Will Martin & Kym Anderson, 2012. "Export Restrictions and Price Insulation During Commodity Price Booms," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 94(2), pages 422-427.
    11. Alston, Julian M. & Wyatt, T. J. & Pardey, Philip G. & Marra, Michele C. & Chan-Kang, Connie, 2000. "A meta-analysis of rates of return to agricultural R & D: ex pede Herculem?," Research reports 113, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    12. Maros Ivanic & Will Martin, 2008. "Implications of higher global food prices for poverty in low‐income countries1," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 39(s1), pages 405-416, November.
    13. Turnovsky, Stephen J & Shalit, Haim & Schmitz, Andrew, 1980. "Consumer's Surplus, Price Instability, and Consumer Welfare," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(1), pages 135-152, January.
    14. Shahidur R. Khandker & Gayatri B. Koolwal & Hussain A. Samad, . "Handbook on Impact Evaluation : Quantitative Methods and Practices," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 2693, September.
    15. Klaus Deininger, 2003. "Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15125.
    16. Quy-Toan Do & Andrei A. Levchenko & Martin Ravallion, 2014. "Trade Insulation as Social Protection," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Food Price Volatility, pages 345-366, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Christophe Gouel, 2014. "Food Price Volatility and Domestic Stabilization Policies in Developing Countries," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Food Price Volatility, pages 261-306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Pardey, Philip G. & Alston, Julian M. & Chan-Kang, Connie, 2012. "Agricultural Production, Productivity and R&D over the Past Half Century: An Emerging New World Order," 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil 131824, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. de Janvry, Alain & Fafchamps, Marcel & Sadoulet, Elisabeth, 1991. "Peasant Household Behaviour with Missing Markets: Some Paradoxes Explained," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(409), pages 1400-1417, November.
    20. Dornbusch, Rudiger, 1976. "Expectations and Exchange Rate Dynamics," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(6), pages 1161-1176, December.
    21. Ravallion, Martin, 1990. "Rural Welfare Effects of Food Price Changes under Induced Wage Responses: Theory and Evidence for Bangladesh," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(3), pages 574-585, July.
    22. World Bank, 2012. "World Development Report 2012 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2012]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4391.
    23. Benton F. Massell, 1969. "Price Stabilization and Welfare," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 83(2), pages 284-298.
    24. Cafiero, Carlo & Bobenrieth H., Eugenio S.A. & Bobenrieth H., Juan R.A. & Wright, Brian D., 2011. "The empirical relevance of the competitive storage model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 162(1), pages 44-54, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sisira Jayasuriya & Purushottam Mudbhary & Sumiter Broca, 2013. "Food Security in Asia: Recent Experiences, Issues and Challenges," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(3), pages 275-288, September.
    2. Anania, Giovanni, 2013. "Agricultural Export Restrictions and the WTO: What Options Do Policy-Makers Have For Promoting Food Security?," Price Volatility and Beyond 320191, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD).
    3. Derrill D. Watson, 2017. "The political economy of food price policy during the global food price crisis of 2006-2008," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 9(3), pages 497-509, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Donald F. Larson & Julian Lampietti & Christophe Gouel & Carlo Cafiero & John Roberts, 2014. "Food Security and Storage in the Middle East and North Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 28(1), pages 48-73.
    2. Ivanic, Maros & Martin, Will & Zaman, Hassan, 2012. "Estimating the Short-Run Poverty Impacts of the 2010–11 Surge in Food Prices," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(11), pages 2302-2317.
    3. Christophe Gouel, 2014. "Food Price Volatility and Domestic Stabilization Policies in Developing Countries," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Food Price Volatility, pages 261-306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Cali,Massimiliano & Hollweg,Claire Honore & Ruppert Bulmer,Elizabeth N., 2015. "Seeking shared prosperity through trade," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7314, The World Bank.
    5. Christophe Gouel, 2012. "Agricultural Price Instability: A Survey Of Competing Explanations And Remedies," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 129-156, February.
    6. Christian Elleby, 2014. "Poverty and Price Transmission," IFRO Working Paper 2015/01, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.
    7. Dick Durevall & Roy Weide, 2017. "Importing High Food Prices by Exporting: Rice Prices in Lao PDR," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(1), pages 164-181, February.
    8. Pieters, Hannah & Swinnen, Johan, 2016. "Trading-off volatility and distortions? Food policy during price spikes," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 27-39.
    9. Jonathan Brooks & Alan Matthews, 2015. "Trade Dimensions of Food Security," OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers 77, OECD Publishing.
    10. Matthias Kalkuhl & Mekbib Haile & Lukas Kornher & Marta Kozicka, 2015. "Cost-benefit framework for policy action to navigate food price spikes. FOODSECURE Working Paper No 33," FOODSECURE Working papers 33, LEI Wageningen UR.
    11. Colin A. Carter & Gordon C. Rausser & Aaron Smith, 2011. "Commodity Booms and Busts," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 87-118, October.
    12. Vincent H. Smith & Joseph W. Glauber, 2020. "Trade, policy, and food security," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 51(1), pages 159-171, January.
    13. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2013. "Essays on Farm Household Decision-Making: Evidence from Vietnam," OSF Preprints 96azx, Center for Open Science.
    14. Kym Anderson & Maros Ivanic & William J. Martin, 2014. "Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation, and Poverty," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Food Price Volatility, pages 311-339, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Christophe Gouel, 2016. "Trade Policy Coordination and Food Price Volatility," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1018-1037.
    16. Kornher, Lukas & Kalkuhl, Matthias, 2013. "Food Price Volatility in Developing Countries and its Determinants," Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Humboldt-Universitaat zu Berlin, vol. 52(4), pages 1-32, November.
    17. Nicolas Legrand, 2019. "The Empirical Merit Of Structural Explanations Of Commodity Price Volatility: Review And Perspectives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 639-664, April.
    18. Nora Lustig, 2009. "Coping with Rising Food Prices: Policy Dilemmas in the Developing World," Working Papers 0907, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    19. Daniel Lederman & Guido Porto, 2016. "The Price Is Not Always Right: On the Impacts of Commodity Prices on Households (and Countries)," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 31(1), pages 168-197.
    20. Christophe Gouel & Sébastien Jean, 2015. "Optimal Food Price Stabilization in a Small Open Developing Country," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(1), pages 72-101.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:iatrtp:142732. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iatrcea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.