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When food prices spike in countries with large numbers of poor people, hunger and malnutrition are very likely to result in the absence of public intervention. For governments, this is also a case of political survival. Government actions often take the form of direct interventions in the market to stabilize food prices, which goes against most international advice to rely on safety nets and world trade. Despite the limitations of food price stabilization policies, they are widespread in developing countries. This paper attempts to untangle the elements of this policy conundrum. Price stabilization policies arise as a result of international and domestic coordination problems. At the individual country level, it is in the national interest of many countries to adjust trade policies to take advantage of the world market in order to achieve domestic price stability. When countercyclical trade policies become widespread, the result is a thinner and less reliable world market, which further decreases the appeal of laissez-faire. A similar vicious circle operates in the domestic market: without effective policies to protect the poor, such as safety nets, food market liberalization lacks credibility and makes private actors reluctant to intervene, which in turn forces government to step in. The current policy challenge lies in designing policies that will build trust in world markets and increase trust between public and private agents. ; Lorsque les prix alimentaires flambent dans des pays avec un grand nombre de personnes pauvres, en l'absence d'intervention publique la faim et la malnutrition sont très probables. Pour les gouvernements, intervenir est aussi une question de survie politique. Les interventions publiques prennent souvent la forme d'interventions sur le marché pour stabiliser les prix, ce qui va à l'encontre de la plupart des recommandations internationales, qui sont plutôt d'utiliser des filets de sécurité sociaux et de laisser le marché fonctionner librement. Cependant, malgré les limites des politiques de stabilisation des prix alimentaires, elles sont très répandues dans les pays en développement. Ce chapitre s'attache à éclairer cet état de fait. Les politiques de stabilisation des prix émergent comme le résultat de problèmes internationaux et domestiques de coordination. Il est dans l'intérêt de nombreux pays d'ajuster leurs politiques commerciales pour utiliser le marché mondial à des fins de stabilisation domestique. Mais, lorsque ces politiques commerciales se généralisent, le résultat est un marché mondial plus étroit et moins fiable, ce qui diminue d'autant l'attrait du libre-échange. Un cercle vicieux similaire opère sur le marché domestique. En l'absence de politiques à même de protéger les pauvres efficacement, comme des filets de sécurité sociaux, la libéralisation des marchés alimentaires manque de crédibilité, ce qui rend les acteurs privés réticents à s'investir, poussant les gouvernements à intervenir. L'enjeu politique actuel est donc de proposer des politiques qui permettent d'améliorer les confiances dans les marchés mondiaux et entre les acteurs privés et publics.

Intro -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Part I Introduction -- 1 Volatile and Extreme Food Prices, Food Security, and Policy: An Overview -- 1.1 The Relevance of Food Price Volatility -- 1.2 Understanding the Linkages Between Food Security, Price Volatility, and Extreme Events -- 1.2.1 The Concept of Food Security -- 1.2.2 Food Price Volatility -- 1.2.3 Extreme Events -- 1.3 Conceptual Framework of Volatility, Food Security Impacts, and Policy Responses -- 1.4 Contribution and Contents of the Book -- 1.5 Implications for Policymaking -- 1.5.1 Policies to Prevent and Reduce Excessive Price Volatility -- 1.5.1.1 Agricultural Markets: Information, Transparency, and Regulation -- 1.5.1.2 Stocks, Trade, and Regional Cooperation -- 1.5.1.3 Biofuel Policies, Energy Prices, Climate Change, and Technological Change -- 1.5.2 Social Protection and Nutrition Policies -- 1.5.3 New International Institutional Arrangements -- 1.6 Implications for Future Research -- References -- Part II Food Price Volatility at International Food Commodity Markets -- 2 Volatile Volatility: Conceptual and Measurement Issues Related to Price Trends and Volatility -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Price Levels and Price Variability -- 2.3 Different Measures and Concepts -- 2.3.1 Prices in Real or Nominal Terms -- 2.3.2 World Prices: In What Currency? -- 2.3.3 Domestic Prices and World Prices -- 2.3.4 Time Horizons -- 2.3.5 The Selection of Food Indices and Food Prices -- 2.3.6 Trends and Volatility: Different Approaches -- 2.3.7 Trends and cycles -- 2.3.8 Shorter-term Variations -- 2.3.9 Expected and Historical Volatility -- 2.3.10 Scaling the Shocks -- 2.4 Conclusions -- References -- 3 Drivers and Triggers of International Food Price Spikes and Volatility -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Conceptual Framework -- 3.3 Estimation Methods -- 3.4 Data -- 3.5 Results and Discussion.

In 2008, when food prices rose precipitously to record highs, international attention and local policy in many countries focused on safety nets as part of the response. Now that food prices are high again, the issue of appropriate responses is again on the policy agenda. This note sets out a framework for making quick, qualitative assessments of how well countries' safety nets prepare them for a rapid policy response to rising food prices should the situation warrant. The framework is applied using data from spring 2011, presenting a snap?shot analysis of what is a dynamically changing situation. Based on this data safety net readiness is assessed in 13 vulnerable countries based on the following criteria: the presence of safety net programs, program coverage, administrative capacity, and to a lesser degree, targeting effectiveness. It is argued that these criteria will remain the same throughout time, even if the sample countries affected will be expected to vary. Based on this analysis the note highlights that though a number of countries are more prepared than they were in 2008, there is still a significant medium term agenda on safety net preparedness in the face of crisis. In this context, strategic lessons from the 2008 food crisis response are presented to better understand the response options and challenges facing governments and policy makers. The note concludes by calling for continued investment and scale up of safety nets to mitigate poverty impacts and help prevent long term setbacks in nutrition and poverty.

AbstractWorldwide, children are enrolled in primary school in greater numbers than ever before. Nonetheless, school dropout rates are significant in many countries. A crucial factor in a child's education and potential for leaving school is their family's economic insecurity. Low‐income households, in particular, are highly sensitive to food prices, and increases in the cost of food staples can force families to sacrifice education to smooth food consumption. While earlier studies have relied on aggregate measures of economic conditions or are restricted to single countries and limited time periods, we take an individual approach and examine how education is affected by local food price volatility. Empirically, we combine individual‐level data on school dropout from 40 Demographic and Health Surveys in 14 sub‐Saharan African countries between 1992 and 2020 with geo‐referenced data on consumer food prices at local markets from the World Food Programme. Our results show that children are up to 8 percent more likely to drop out when local food prices sharply increase. Notably, this effect is strongest for older children, especially for boys. This demonstrates that economic instability during childhood can have long‐run adverse effects on individuals and has important implications for understanding the human capital costs of income crises.

Agricultural Economics

Since the 2007-08 food crisis, many thoughtful analyses have addressed the causes and impacts of high and volatile international food prices and proposed solutions to the crisis. These studies have covered global as well as local food price dynamics and policy reactions. The food price problem is, however, far-reaching, and its impacts are wide and interrelated. The price formation mechanism has become highly complex and dynamic. Policy actions are politically and economically sensitive. This situation calls for continuous and comprehensive assessments of the problem to provide timely and evidence-based knowledge for policy makers. This paper reviews existing evidence and theories and presents new thoughts and insights from analyses to enlighten the course of actions to be taken. Our review implies that the current body of literature concentrates on high food prices. Commodity price analysis should, however, differentiate between three types of price changes: trends, volatility, and spikes. While price trends are important in the long term, volatility and spikes are more important in the short to medium terms. Descriptive statistics indicate that all three price changes are increasing over time and show strong correlations among themselves. A rising medium-term price trend has triggered extreme short-term price spikes and increased volatility. An assessment of the costs of price volatility has shown that the existing literature follows a conventional marginal-cost approach that considers only few cost components. Direct and immediate components have not been adequately analyzed, and long-term effects have been overlooked. The effect on child nutrition and health is one such long-term effect. Under-nutrition in early childhood has negative consequences for lifetime earnings capacity because of the physical and mental impairment it causes. Economy wide distortions and misallocations also threaten the long-term development of commodity-dependent economies. Measuring and estimating the cost of food price volatility should factor in ongoing processes such as economic growth and technological changes. The supply, demand, and market explanations for high and volatile global prices have been differentiated as exogenous and endogenous factors. To help further identify the drivers of food price changes, they are categorized as root causes, intermediate causes, and immediate causes. Both empirical and theoretical evaluations suggest extreme weather events from the supply side, biofuel production from the demand side, and speculation in commodity futures from the market side are the three most important root causes of observed price volatility. The theoretical and empirical effects of speculation in commodity futures are not yet well understood. However, speculative trading in commodity futures should not be viewed as a random bet that can be smoothed out through the price system. It is important to consider the market and nonmarket contexts that guide the behavioral and strategic choices of speculators. Whereas speculation caused by manipulative, disorderly behaviors and financialization are damaging, speculation caused by demand and supply in physical markets can serve as price discovery, liquidity, and risk-hedging mechanisms. Our empirical analysis to quantify the importance of these factors shows that speculation effect is stronger than demand- and supply-side shocks for short term price spikes. Overall policy interventions at global, regional, and local levels should concentrate on reducing price spikes and protecting poor people from short- and long-term crises. The viii formulation and implementation of such policies must be supported with timely information and research-based evidence. A comprehensive portfolio of policy actions is proposed here, rather than over-extended individual measures to address the root causes or over-regulation of markets to address volatility and spikes. Evaluation of policy instruments should weigh the true costs associated with both, action versus inaction. Research must focus on developing price and food security indicators and models that will guide policy implementation also in the short run. Such models are currently missing.