Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation, and Poverty

Anderson, Kym ; Ivanic, Maros ; Martin, Will

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES;    AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS;    AGRICULTURAL PRICE;    AGRICULTURAL WAGES;    AGRICULTURE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6535
RP-ID  :  WPS6535

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper has two purposes. It firstconsiders the impact on world food prices of the changes inrestrictions on trade in staple foods during the 2008 worldfood price crisis. Those changes -- reductions in importprotection or increases in export restraints -- were meantto partially insulate domestic markets from the spike ininternational prices. The authors find that this insulationadded substantially to the spike in international prices forrice, wheat, maize, and oilseeds. As a result, althoughdomestic prices rose less than they would have withoutinsulation in some developing countries, in many othercountries they rose more than they would have in the absenceof such insulation. The paper's second purpose it toestimate the combined impact of such insulating behavior onpoverty in various developing countries and globally. Theanalysis finds that the actual poverty-reducing impact ofinsulation is much less than its apparent impact, and thatits net effect was to increase global poverty in 2008 by 8million people, although this increase was not significantlydifferent from zero. Since there are domestic policyinstruments, such as conditional cash transfers, that couldnow provide social protection for the poor far moreefficiently and equitably than variations in borderrestrictions, the authors suggest it is time to seek amultilateral agreement to desist from changing restrictionson trade when international food prices spike.