Blog

by Patricia Justino October 2020

Professor Patricia Justino is a leading expert on the links between political violence and economic development. Her work has greatly expanded...

• Conflict
• Peace
• Hunger

Blog

Danielle Resnick and Regina Birner In recent years, there has been renewed emphasis on promoting agricultural production and food security in sub...

• Agriculture
• Agriculture and state
• Food security

Blog

Tony Addison and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa China and India are making immense strides in development. Growth in both countries has been impressive. But...

• Economic development
• Economic growth
• Poverty measurement

Blog

by Duncan Green November 2012

Duncan Green Updating a book on contemporary events can be unnerving. In the intervening years, events and new thinking combine to expose the...

• Democracy
• Ecology
• Economic development

Research Brief

The recent food price crisis and the responses of the policy makers in developing countries provide an unprecedented opportunity to analyse the policy processes in these countries. Policy responses differed depending on the nature and magnitude of...

• Accounting
• Aeronautics
• Agriculture

Working Paper

The substantive role that vitamin and mineral deficiencies play in shaping crisis-related morbidity and mortality was not widely understood when Amartya Sen elaborated his arguments about moral rights of the hungry, entitlements, and public action...

• Food security
• Food supply
• Humanitarian assistance

Working Paper

Over the past decade, a series of events in India have brought the question of food security into sharp focus. Vast famine-affected areas versus surplus production and stocks of grains, the impact of globalization and World Trade Organization laws on...

• Food security
• Government accountability
• Human rights

Working Paper

The food security scenario in South Asia has witnessed rapid progress over the last few decades, yet nutrition outcomes, especially those related to women and children, have failed to keep pace. This paper contends that the role of women in providing...

• Agricultural labourers
• Food security
• Poverty

Working Paper

Agriculture contributes substantially to output and employment in South Asian countries. Therefore, any change, like trade liberalization, that impacts on the agriculture sector has widespread ramifications in terms of employment, nutrition...

• Agriculture
• Food security
• International trade

Working Paper

Food insecurity at the household level has become unacceptable in India where the economy is growing at high rates and food sufficiency is already achieved at the macro-level. Food security has always been an important issue in the Indian political...

• Consumption
• Food security
• Households

Working Paper

Basic human rights recognize the intrinsic value of freedom, only not for the value of freedom itself, but also for its instrumental role enabling an individual to choose a bundle of commodities and wellbeing. The role of food, a basic necessity of...

• Agriculture and state
• Food security
• Food supply

Working Paper

This paper offers an economic assessment of the opportunities and challenges provided by the WTO’s Doha Development Agenda, particularly through agricultural trade liberalization, for low-income countries seeking to trade their way out of poverty...

• Agriculture
• Food security
• Poverty

Working Paper

This study examines the role of women's intra-household status relative to men in children's food security in Pakistan. Data from the 1991 Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS) yield a measure of evidence of a positive relation between women's...

• Children
• Equality and inequality
• Food security

Journal Article

Part of Journal Special Issue Bioenergy in Southern Africa

• Biofuel
• Computable general equilibrium
• Food security

Working Paper

• Famine
• Marketing (Farm produce)
• Food security

Working Paper

The 2008 episode of food price explosion, political turmoil, and human suffering revealed important flaws in the current global food architecture. This paper argues that to safeguard the strengths of the current system, four failures in market...

• Agriculture
• Agriculture and state
• Food security

Working Paper

The consequences of climate change for agriculture and food security in developing countries are of serious concern. Due to their reliance on rain-fed agriculture both as a source of income and consumption, many low-income countries are generally...

• Agriculture
• Climate change
• Farm produce

Working Paper

Using data from a survey of Bangladeshi households, this paper investigates the link between female status and food security. Employing three different indicators of female status – husband’s and wife’s assets brought at marriage, female share of...

• Food security
• Households
• Women

Working Paper

We investigate if financial inclusion leads to improved nutrition in rural Rwanda, using Rwandan Integrated Household Living Conditions surveys (2013/14 and 2016/17). Our empirical evidence shows a robust positive impact of financial inclusion...

• Financial inclusion
• Food security
• Nutrition

Research Brief

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, poor in natural resources, and with low levels of human development. Its economy remains agricultural and focused on food crops and cotton production. Over the last twenty years it has experienced...

• Agriculture
• Equality and inequality
• Food security

Research Brief

Evidence obtained from detailed household surveys in Mozambique during the 2008-09 food price shock reveals just how pronounced the impact of food price inflation can be on children’s overall nutrition status. Moderate and severe underweight...

• Agriculture
• Children
• Food security

Research Brief

The Egyptian food system has been affected by both global food markets and domestic factors. During the recent global food price crisis, an estimated 30–40 percent of the price fluctuations in the global food market were transmitted to Egypt’s food...

• Agriculture
• Fiscal policy
• Food industry and trade

Research Brief

The global food crisis in 2007–08 raised concerns everywhere, including in China. However, despite China’s highly-integrated domestic and international markets for many agricultural commodities, the effect of the crisis in China was only moderate...

• Agriculture
• Food industry and trade
• Food security

Research Brief

Global food price hikes during 2007-08 resulted in a sharp rise in staple food prices in Bangladesh, which in turn led to a significant rise in the number of households falling below the poverty line. On the political front, Bangladesh was run by an...

• Agriculture
• Food security

Blog

by Luc Christiaensen August 2009

Luc Christiaensen Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER At the G8 July summit in Aquila, Italy, US$ 20 billion was pledged to support farmers in poorer...

• Agriculture
• Agriculture and state
• Food security

Working Paper

The effects of climate change in Turkey are expected to be significant. The aim of this paper is to quantify the effects of climate change on the overall economy by using an integrated framework incorporating a computable general equilibrium model...

• Agriculture
• Economic equilibrium
• Food security

Policy Brief

World hunger is prevalent yet receives relatively less attention compared to poverty. The MDGs have taken a step to address this with the resolution of halving the number of starving people in the world by 2015. A substantial and sustainable...

• Food security
• Human rights
• Hunger

Working Paper

Understanding the relationship between food insecurity and subjective evaluation of well-being is critical in designing social welfare policies, especially in developing countries. Surprisingly, literature on the topic is scarce. This study adopted...

• Food security
• Quality of life
• Welfare economics

Working Paper

• Food industry and trade
• Food security
• Humanitarian assistance

Working Paper

• Families
• Food security
• Malnutrition

Working Paper

• Equality and inequality
• Food security
• Life expectancy

Working Paper

The objective of this paper is to develop a Model that integrates the biologically determined human need for food energy and the economic activity (most) people Bust engage in to be able to eat. The optimal work effort and the optimal body size of...

• Food security
• International agencies
• Women

Working Paper

A large part of Africa is chronically affected by a severe food crisis which threatens the food security of many of her inhabitants. A peculiarity of this continent is that food production is not only a source of food but also a source of incomes for...

• Agriculture
• Famine
• Food security

Working Paper

The way markets respond to anti-hunger policies can have considerable bearing on their effectiveness. This paper investigates market responses to various policies, including direct transfer payments, relief work, food pricing policies, public grain...

• Food security
• Poor
• Government policy (Poor)

Working Paper

Our aim in this paper was to seek illumination on three questions pertaining to the food problems of Bangladesh: first, what are the processes perpetuating the food deprivation of great majority of the masses; secondly, has Bangladesh achieved over...

• Agriculture and state
• Famine
• Food security

Working Paper

• Children
• Food security
• Health

Blog

by Tony Addison March 2012

Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...

• Agriculture
• Budget
• Nationalism

Working Paper

India’s policy responses to the food price crisis were strong. Exports of basic staples were banned. Domestic support prices of wheat and rice were raised substantially. The urea price increases in global markets were absorbed through enhanced...

• Agriculture
• Food industry and trade
• Food security

Working Paper

Food marketing is one of the fields where structural adjustment has been implemented throughout the Sub-Saharan Africa. This study analyses the impact of reform on the functioning and efficiency of food marketing. It is based on a comparative...

• Agriculture and state
• Structural adjustment (Economic policy)
• Food industry and trade

Working Paper

• Agriculture and state
• Central planning
• Famine

Working Paper

Liberalization of food marketings has been implemented as a part of structural adjustment programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this study we assess the i) the aims of the reform policy, ii) the implementation of specific reform measures, iii) the...

• Agriculture and state
• Structural adjustment (Economic policy)
• Food industry and trade

Working Paper

• Agricultural innovations
• Agriculture and state
• Farm produce

Journal Article

This paper evaluates the impact of an intervention to improve farming techniques and food security in the Gaza area of rural Mozambique. We examine the impact of a group-based approach to technology adoption in subsistence agriculture, using panel...

• Agriculture
• Food security
• Technological innovations

Blog

Tony Addison and Finn Tarp More than 200 researchers and policymakers came together in Helsinki in mid-May to celebrate UNU-WIDER's 25th anniversary...

• Climate change
• Economic assistance and foreign aid
• Financial crisis

Policy Brief

• Agricultural industries
• Food security
• Food supply

Working Paper

• Public finance
• Food security
• Natural disasters

Working Paper

The focus of this paper is the role played in rural contexts by contract farming agreements between smallholders and private investors. These contracts can take different forms, but in general are agreements under which producers commit to supply...

• Contract farming
• Food security
• Mozambique

Working Paper

The predominant perception is that the world's food problems are now concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa. Declining food production and recurrent famine in many African countries are the focal points of much recent work on food problems. This paper...

• Children
• Food security
• Life expectancy

Working Paper

• Consumption
• Food security
• Health

Working Paper

After the devastating famine of 1974, Bangladesh has successfully avoided any further disaster of its kind, surviving two close calls in 1979 and 1984 and a succession of floods in the recent years. Welcome as it, this success raises for the analyst...

• Agricultural innovations
• Agriculture
• Agriculture and state

Working Paper

• Agriculture and state
• Food industry and trade
• Food security

Book Chapter

Book chapter in: P. Dorosh and S. Rashid (eds) Food and Agriculture in Ethiopia: Progress and Policy Challenges.Ethiopia’s economy has experienced rapid growth in recent years. Although growth in agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) from 1998 to...

• Agriculture
• Economic growth
• Food security

Book Chapter

Book chapter in: Fan, S., and R. Pandya-Lorch (eds.), Reshaping Agriculture for Nutrition and Health.In recent times, many countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, have been left puzzled by their failure to improve...

• Agriculture
• Food security
• Poverty

Journal Article

Rapid economic growth does not appear to have significantly improved poverty and nutrition outcomes in Tanzania. We link recent production trends to household incomes using a regionalized, recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium and...

• Economic growth
• Economic equilibrium
• Food security

Book Chapter

Part of Book Aid Effectiveness for Environmental Sustainability

• Sustainable development
• Foreign aid
• Agriculture

Book Chapter

Part of Book Aid Effectiveness for Environmental Sustainability

• Agriculture
• Sustainable development
• Food security

Working Paper

• Food security
• Malnutrition
• Methodology (Poverty)

Working Paper

This paper uses econometric methods and case-study evidence to examine the political economy of complex humanitarian emergencies, multidimensional crises characterized by warfare, disease, hunger, and displacement. We find that stagnation and decline...

• Conflict management
• Food security
• Humanitarian assistance

Journal Article

Many low-income countries in Africa are optimistic that producing biofuels will both reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels and stimulate economic development, particularly in poorer rural areas. Conversely, skeptics view biofuels as a threat to...

• Environment and economic development
• Food security
• Poverty

Book Chapter

Part of Book The Politics of Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa

• Food security
• Political settlements
• Process tracing

Working Paper

Food insecurity and hunger have traditionally been measured by aggregate food supplies or by variables correlated with food insecurity. Because these measures often poorly reflect individuals’ true deprivation, economists have turned to surveys with...

• Equality and inequality
• Food security
• Poverty measurement

Working Paper

Food security is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon. As such, its measurement may entail and benefit from the combination of both ‘qualitative-subjective’ and ‘quantitative-objective’ indicators. Yet, the evidence on the external validity of...

• Food security
• Household survey
• Qualitative research methodology

Working Paper

India accounts for 16.7 per cent of the world’s food consumers. With the exception of China, India’s size in terms of food consumers is many times larger than the average size of the rest of the countries. At the time of independence in 1947, India...

• Agriculture
• Food security
• Marketing

Working Paper

This paper analyses the status of food security in selected South Pacific Island countries, namely Cook Islands, Fiji Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu at the national and household levels during the period 1991...

• Agriculture and state
• Food industry and trade
• Food security