IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/494.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Alleviating transitory food crisis in Africa : international altruism and trade

Author

Listed:
  • Lavy, Victor

Abstract

This paper focuses on criticism about the use of emergency food aid in sub-Saharan Africa. More specifically, it examines the response of the donor community to unexpected or transitory drops in domestic food production in 26 countries. The study compares the role of food aid and commercial food imports in offsetting these shocks and covering the shortfall in food consumption. Several hypotheses that determine the tendency of donors to respond to the needs of different countries are tested. The results suggest that food aid and commercial food imports stabilize food consumption and neutralize the effects of random shocks to domestic production. Food aid compensates for up to 50 percent of the drop in food production; imports make up an additional 30 percent. This paper documents the stylized facts of food insecurity in Africa and shows the relative importance of emergency and total food aid to food production and food shortages. The paper includes an empirical framework for the estimation and analysis of the correlation between food aid and food production and presents the results. Lastly, the paper elaborates on the economic and political determinants that affect the global response to the emergency needs of countries in Africa.

Suggested Citation

  • Lavy, Victor, 1990. "Alleviating transitory food crisis in Africa : international altruism and trade," Policy Research Working Paper Series 494, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:494
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1990/08/01/000009265_3960929174416/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Srinivasan, T N, 1989. "Food Aid: A Cause of Development Failure or an Instrument for Success?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 3(1), pages 39-65, January.
    2. Ravallion, Martin, 1987. "Trade and stabilization: Another look at British India's controversial foodgrain exports," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 354-370, October.
    3. Lavy, Victor, 1990. "Does food aid depress food production? The disincentive dilemma in the African context," Policy Research Working Paper Series 460, The World Bank.
    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. Lavy, Victor, 1990. "Does food aid depress food production? The disincentive dilemma in the African context," Policy Research Working Paper Series 460, The World Bank.

    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. Abdulai, Awudu & Barrett, Christopher B. & Hazell, Peter, 2004. "Food aid for market development in Sub-Saharan Africa," DSGD discussion papers 5, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    2. Barrett, Christopher B., 2002. "Food Aid And Commercial International Food Trade," Working Papers 14742, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    3. Donovan, Cynthia & McGlinchy, Megan & Staatz, John M. & Tschirley, David L., 2006. "Emergency Needs Assessments and the Impact of Food Aid on Local Markets," Food Security International Development Working Papers 54566, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    4. Ferrière, Nathalie & Suwa-Eisenmann, Akiko, 2015. "Does Food Aid Disrupt Local Food Market? Evidence from Rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 114-131.
    5. Cormac Ó Gráda, 2007. "Making Famine History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(1), pages 5-38, March.
    6. Martin Ravallion, 2013. "The Idea of Antipoverty Policy," NBER Working Papers 19210, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Baulch, Bob & Gondwe, Anderson & Chafuwa, Chiyembekezo, 2018. "Impacts of the 2016/17 food insecurity response program on maize prices in Malawi," MaSSP working papers 22, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    8. Bezu, Sosina & Holden, Stein, 2008. "Can food-for-work encourage agricultural production?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 541-549, December.
    9. Ferrière, Nathalie & Suwa-Eisenmann, Akiko, 2014. "Does food aid disrupt local food market?," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182693, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Tirthankar Roy, 2021. "Why geography matters to the economic history of India," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(3), pages 273-289, November.
    11. Lowder, Sarah K. & Southgate, Douglas & Rodriguez-Meza, Jorge, 2004. "A Post Schultzian View Of Food Aid, Trade And Developing Country Cereal Production: Results Of A Vector Autoregression On Panel Data Using Fixed Effects," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 19919, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    12. Mkumbwa, Solomon S., 2011. "Cereal food commodities in Eastern Africa: consumption - production gap trends and projections for 2020," MPRA Paper 42113, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Will Martin, 2017. "Agricultural Trade and Food Security," Policy notes & Policy briefs 1744, Policy Center for the New South.
    14. Mr. Erwin H Tiongson & Mr. Benedict J. Clements & Mr. Sanjeev Gupta, 2003. "Foreign Aid and Consumption Smoothing: Evidence From Global Food Aid," IMF Working Papers 2003/040, International Monetary Fund.
    15. Kiawu, James & Jones, Keithly G, 2013. "Implications of food aid and remittances for West African food import demand," African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 8(1), pages 1-15, July.
    16. Baulch, B., 2018. "Impacts of the 2016-17 Food Insecurity Response Program on maize prices in Malawi," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277330, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    17. Lavy, Victor, 1990. "Does food aid depress food production? The disincentive dilemma in the African context," Policy Research Working Paper Series 460, The World Bank.
    18. Max Blouin & Stéphane Pallage, 2008. "Humanitarian Relief and Civil Conflict," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 52(4), pages 548-565, August.
    19. Tebogo B. Seleka & Khaufelo R. Lekobane, 2017. "Public Transfers and Participation Decisions in Botswana's Subsistence Economy," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 1380-1400, November.
    20. Abdulai, Awudu & Barrett, Christopher B. & Hoddinott, John, 2005. "Does food aid Really have disincentive effects? New evidence from sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1689-1704, October.

    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:wbk:wbrwps:494. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.