Publication: Evaluating Alternative Policy Responses to Higher World Food Prices : The Case of Increasing Rice Prices in Madagascar
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Published
2009
ISSN
00029092
Date
2012-03-30
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Higher world food prices have led many developing countries to adopt policies to mitigate the impact on low-income households. This article sets out a partial equilibrium framework to evaluate the efficiency, distributional, and revenue implications of alternative policy responses. The model is applied to evaluate tariff reductions and targeted transfers in Madagascar. Although lowering tariffs generates substantial efficiency gains, these accrue mainly to the top half of the welfare distribution, and poor net sellers are actually worse off. Developing a system of targeted direct transfers to poor households is likely to be a substantially more cost-effective approach to poverty alleviation.
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Publication Food Price Stabilisation and Food Security : International Experience(2008)The importance of food commodities to consumers and farmers leads most countries to attempt to influence the levels and stability of food prices. The specific policies adopted and the degree of price stabilisation actually achieved vary considerably across countries, however. This paper reviews the experience of four countries (China, India, Bangladesh and Madagascar) that have implemented explicit price stabilisation and food security policies. 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To reduce world food price volatility, suggested responses are to: (1) develop weather-tolerant crop varieties to reduce food production shocks; (2) improve management of food-grain stock purchases and releases to reduce, rather than amplify, local and world food price volatility; (3) shift to market-based biofuels policies (make biofuels mandates more flexible); (4) open trade across all markets to diversify short-term production shocks dissipating the associated price effects; and (5) improve market transparency to reduce market uncertainty and the associated large price corrections following revisions to market information (production, stocks, and trade). 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