Role of international price and domestic inflation in triggering export restrictions on food commodities

This paper investigates the drivers of export restrictions on agricultural products based on an original dataset developed at IFPRI. We focus on four food price crises when export restrictions (e.g., ban, tax, licensing etc.) were applied: the 2008 and 2010 food price crises, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 crisis associated with the Russia-Ukraine war. Although the justifications for such trade policies have been discussed in the literature, the ability to forecast their implementation remains understudied. The probit model used in this study suggests that the inflation rate has a higher power to predict export restrictions than do international commodity prices. The probability of export restrictions increases more when price change is measured from a reference level in the long interval than the short interval. Among the covariates, agricultural land per capita, commodity share in production and export, weather condition increases the chances of imposing export restrictions. Per capita income, population density, share of agriculture in GDP, urbanization rate, political economy indicators - all have a negative influence on this likelihood.