In April 2001 the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) approached the Supreme Court of India arguing that the government has a duty to provide greater relief in the context of mass hunger. The litigation has now become the best known precedent...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The objective of this paper is to analyse the welfare effects of food price volatility on Cameroonian consumers. Using data from the third Cameroonian Household Consumption Surveys, the price elasticities are obtained from a Quadratic Almost Ideal...
We estimate the impact of Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy Programme using an economywide approach. We find potentially substantial net benefits with indirect benefits accounting for about two-fifths of total benefits. Due to these indirect benefits, the...
The paper studies the experience of Ethiopia with regard to the two major famines the country has witnessed in the last fifteen years. It is argued that the entitlements approach developed by Amartya Sen provides a useful analytical framework within...
China's approach to feeding its 22 per cent of the world population has varied considerably during the 36 years of the People's Republic, and so have the results. In the late 1970s its leadership began repudiating much of the country's earlier...
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...
This paper analyses the food price trends in South Africa during two periods of rapid food price inflation that occurred in the decade 2000–10 and unpacks the political reaction and policy responses to the food price crises in these two periods...
Examining the problem of hunger in the modern world and the role public opinion might play in combating it, Drèze and Sen here provide a coherent perspective on the complex nutritional, economic, social, and political issues involved in the analysis...
18 December 2014 Roger Williamson At the UN headquarters in New York on 18 November 2014, Peter Timmer, emeritus professor from Harvard, showed how...
The programme did lead participating households to use improved seeds. Food consumption scores did not improve after the programme. However during the programme participating households moved to more sustainable strategies to cope with food shortages...
This paper investigates the expenditure patterns of South African households using detailed cross-sectional expenditure and price data. Linear expenditure system (LES) parameter estimates are used to calculate income and price elasticities for a...
This paper evaluates the impact of an integrated rural development programme on farming techniques and food security in the Gaza area of rural Mozambique. We examine the impact of a group-based approach, in a country with few impact evaluations of...
The global economy is passing through a period of profound change. The immediate concern is with the financial crisis, originating in the North. The South is affected via reduced demand and lower prices for their exports, reduced private financial...
We are now into 2015, and the year is already gathering speed. 2015 is of course the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, and a major year in...
Part of Journal Special Issue The Political Economy of Africa's Emergent Middle Class
A large share of the population in many developing countries suffer from chronic undernutrition. In this book, Professor Svedberg provides a detailed comparative study of undernutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the two worst affected...
The global economy is passing through a period of profound change. The immediate concern is with the financial crisis, originating in the North. The South is affected via reduced demand and lower prices for their exports, reduced private financial...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the disruption, by sanctions or war, of two of the world’s largest grain exporters. This means 2022 is shaping...
The study focuses on the period 2004–09 during which Egypt experienced food crisis. The political economy context on how the government responded to the crisis is analysed while pinpointing to what extent there was a pass-through effect from...
A propitiously timed household survey carried out in Mozambique over the period 2008-09 permits us to evaluate the short-to-medium run relationship between sudden shocks to food prices and child nutrition status. We link local price inflation with...
The rush for land acquisition—primarily driven by food shortages, food price volatility, and the run for agrofuel—has drawn considerable attention, as documented by reports published in late 2009, 2010, and 2011. Terminological differences aside, it...
This book is Open Access and available here. Food price volatility is one of the major challenges facing current and future global food systems. Since 2006, global food prices have fluctuated greatly around an increasing trend and price spikes were...
Join the network
