ingredients of famine analysis availability and entitlements famines often take place in situations of moderate to good food availability without any significant decline of food supply per head the paper presents an alternative approach to famines which does not concentrate on availability but on people s ability to command food through legal means available in the society including the use of production possibilities trade opportunities entitlements vis a vis the state etc the approach is explained focusing on exchange entitlement mappings fluctuations in which can lead to big shifts in the intergroup distribution of food command the approach is then applied to the bengal famine of 1943 the ethiopian famine in wollo in 1973 and the bangladesh famine in 1974 and some general conclusions are drawn about the nature and classes of famines

rice land designation policy in vietnam and the implications of policy reform for food security and economic welfare abstract with the aim of promoting national food security the vietnamese government enforces the designation of around 35 per cent of agricultural land strictly for paddy rice cultivation we investigate the economic effects of adjusting this policy using an economy wide model of vietnam with detailed modelling of region specific land use agricultural activity poverty and food security measures our results show that the removal of the rice land designation policy increases real private consumption by an average of 0 35 per cent per annum over 2011 2030 while also reducing poverty improving food security and contributing to more nutritionally balanced diets among vietnamese households

evaluating unemployment policies what do the underlying theories tell us the paper surveys unemployment policies for advanced market economies and evaluates them by examining the predictions of the underlying macroeconomic theories the basic idea is that for the most part different unemployment policy prescriptions rest on different macroeconomic theories and our confidence in the prescriptions should depend at least in part on theories ability to predict some salient stylized facts about unemployment behavior the paper considers four types of policies laissez faire demand management policies supply side policies and structural policies copyright 1995 by oxford university press

synthesizing the malthusian and senian approaches on scarcity a realist account food entitlement decline fed and food availability decline fad are two approaches to explaining famines that have different policy implications one focuses on the systemic level whereas the other is concerned with the individual level they therefore analyse relatively distinct causal mechanisms thus an important question is whether these approaches can be reconciled another related question is how fad and fed based explanations relate to classical malthusian views about rapid food requirement increase fri this paper analyses these questions and argues that these three approaches can indeed be reconciled within a single framework by outlining the causal sources of fad fed and fri this task requires among other things the separation of ontological categories and empirical measures as a consequence of this argument the paper suggests that there are only seven possible ontological combinations of how a famine situation can arise as a direct cause simultaneously it maintains that there are virtually an infinite number of ways in which these combinations may act as indirect causes rooted in economic political and social conditions the analysis is exemplified by the bengal famine of 1943 because that famine is a well known case the wider research and policy applicability of this general account are discussed but have yet to be tested in relation to other scarcity cases water land fish this synthesis is made possible by the incorporation of critical realist interventions into economic theory

do rice prices follow a random walk evidence from markov switching unit root tests for asian markets this study revisits the issue of mean reversion in the import rice prices of six asian countries over the period between 1995 and 2015 augmented dickey fuller tests with a conventional linear regression model support the presence of a unit root in the levels of the price data however when regressions allow for markov switching in coefficients and variances to capture periodic shifts in levels and volatilities there is strong evidence against the unit root null hypothesis in favor of stationarity over much of the observation period

navigating the perfect storm reflections on the food energy and financial crises the closely interlinked food energy and financial crises pose a significant new challenge to the global effort to reduce poverty in 2008 food prices rose sharply in many countries and global poverty and hunger levels increased quite markedly the good news is that the agricultural supply response in many countries was also strong the impacts of the financial crisis on poor countries have yet to fully roll out but it is clear that more people have fallen into poverty and more are suffering from hunger lastly there are strong indications that the global food system is fundamentally changing in a number of dimensions biofuels are here to stay and energy and food prices appear to have adjusted to a higher equilibrium and will in turn raise the prospects of renewed volatility in agricultural commodity markets trade protection has also resurfaced but so have renewed investments in agriculture these fundamental shifts bring with them opportunities and risks that require internationally coordinated responses with strong national buy in as well as timely and relevant research

selection and monetary non neutrality in time dependent pricing models for a given frequency of price adjustment monetary non neutrality is smaller if older prices are disproportionately more likely to change selection for the age of prices provides a complete characterization of price setting frictions in time dependent models selection for older prices is weaker and non neutralities are larger if the hazard function of price adjustment is less strongly increasing selection is weaker if there is heterogeneity in price stickiness finally selection is weaker if durations of price spells are more variable in particular the taylor 1979 model exhibits maximal selection for older prices whereas the calvo 1983 model exhibits no selection

forecasting development outcomes under alternative surplus labour assumptions abstracteconomic forecasts are useful to policymakers both as aids to planning and as baselines against which counterfactual scenarios can be compared however policy makers should be aware that assumptions relating to model structure can influence forecast results we explore the sensitivity of forecasts to one aspect of model structure important in modelling developing economies surplus agricultural labour we outline a framework for modelling surplus agricultural labour that relies on average product remuneration we embed this within a model of a developing economy the philippines characterized by surplus agricultural labour we compare the results of two forecasts that differ in their treatment of the agricultural labour market in the first the surplus labour theory is activated establishing average product remuneration in agriculture in the second the surplus labour theory is not activated creating a failure to recognize average product remuneration in agriculture by comparing the two si

the singapore dollar tests of the efficient markets hypothesis and the role of news in this paper the efficient markets hypothesis emh is tested for the singapore dollar over the period from january 1978 to march 1983 the tests are conducted using the relationship between the spot foreign exchange rate and the corresponding lagged forward foreign exchange rate the tests consist of an unbiasedness test an error orthogonality test and a test of the impact of news in the singapore foreign exchange market the results indicate a certain degree of independence in the implementation of monetary policy for the singapore monetary authority

money income and prices in singapore reconsidered 1990 money income and prices in singapore reconsidered applied economics vol 22 no 5 pp 653 668

does agricultural trade liberalization increase risks of supply side uncertainty effects of productivity shocks and export restrictions on welfare and food supply in japan abstract agriculture is the focus of much contention in free trade negotiations the japanese government is against liberalizing the rice trade on the grounds that it would threaten national food security in the events of such shocks as crop failure and embargoes trade liberalization is expected to make the japanese economy more dependent upon food imports and thus more susceptible to these risks using a computable general equilibrium model with a monte carlo simulation we quantify the welfare impacts of productivity shocks and export quotas by major rice exporters to japan and found little evidence of japan suffering from such shocks

inertial inflation indexation and price stickiness evidence from brazil abstract this paper evaluates the inertial inflation hypothesis for brazil the hypothesis posits that indexation created a feedback mechanism such that one time supply shocks were fully transmitted into permanent changes in inflation a theoretical model is used to show that this outcome is based on the assumption of perfect price flexibility however with price stickiness indexation does not produce inertial inflation the degree of inertia is then compared for two periods one without indexation 1945 1963 and one with indexation 1969 1985 finally vector autoregressive representations are estimated for the latter period allowing for price stickiness the empirical results do not support the hypothesis

monetary targets real exchange rates and macroeconomic stability abstract in this paper i develop a model to determine the optimal degree of flexibility in attaining monetary targets in an economy that is affected by shocks in the labor and financial markets i then simulate the model to assess the optimal degree of monetary policy flexibility in spain a country that has adopted monetary targets rigidly since 1978 i show that the model supports the policy choice of that country i also show that the monetary authorities should attribute more importance to real exchange rate movements in choosing their policies if the spanish economy becomes more open to international trade or if the labor market becomes more flexible

services inflation dynamics and persistence puzzle in brazil a time varying parameter approach this article analyses services inflation dynamics in brazil focusing on the services inflation persistence puzzle for monthly data from january 2004 to february 2016 we apply a time varying para

the return of the liquidity effect a study of the short run relation between money growth and interest rates in this article i use band pass filters to investigate the short run relationship between money growth and interest rates i find a negative correlation between short run movements in money growth and interest rates which i interpret as evidence that the liquidity effect dominates the anticipated inflation effect

the causes of famine abstract this article argues that sen s theory of famine will lead to the wrong diagnosis and the wrong remedies for famine and will therefore worsen the situation his analysis of the bengal famine is a case in point it is based on unreliable and inaccurate statistics even the statistics he does use contradict his thesis his explanatory hypotheses are shown to be theoretically and factually wrong the actions of the bengal government of 1943 are looked at in the light of sen s recommendations

the inadequacy of the entitlement approach to explain and remedy famines 1988 the inadequacy of the entitlement approach to explain and remedy famines the journal of development studies vol 25 no 1 pp 112 116

politics economics agriculture and famines the chinese case abstract this paper is a study of the littleknown chinese famine of 1959 1961 which took place during the great leap forward this famine was caused by the revolutionary politics of the time which failed agriculture and killed at least 25 million people the crucial point is that the famine was most cruel in the cities where workers incomes were much higher than those of their counterparts in the countryside

the impact of oecd biofuels policies on developing countries oecd countries biofuels policies derived from energy and environmental legislation and activated by high oil prices were the primary cause of not only the sudden spike in grain and oilseed prices in 2007 2008 but also of the ensuing price volatility even though developing countries have a comparative advantage in biofuels production they were shut out of rich countries biofuel markets by trade discriminating biofuels policies developing countries would not have been able to take full advantage of the price spike in the short run anyway given the low supply elasticities and the long time required for biofuel production to come online unlike for corn ethanol the controversy over the right price of food is misplaced and policy makers should instead focus on improving biofuels policies which like their counterpart agricultural policies in previous decades have damaged the welfare of developing countries

export restrictions and price insulation during commodity price booms for individual countries variable trade barriers can be used to reduce the volatility of domestic relative to world prices if this is done by countries accounting for a large share of the market its effect is offset by increases in world price volatility this study shows the nature of the resulting collective action problem with the policy being ineffective on average in stabilizing domestic prices while increasing the volatility of the income transfers from terms of trade changes a simple approach to assessing the contribution of insulation to the price increases is developed and used with new estimates of agricultural distortions to assess its contribution to the price spikes in 1972 74 and 2006 08 for rice and wheat the analysis suggests that 45 percent of the increase in rice prices in 2006 08 and 30 percent of the increase in wheat prices was due to insulating behavior one sign of progress since 1972 74 was a substantial reduction in the extent of price insulating behavior by the industrial countries this provides little stabilizing benefit in the rice market because countries not classifying themselves at the world trade organization as developing account for only 3 percent of world rice consumption but it does offer some benefit for the wheat market where non developing countries account for 27 percent of consumption

reflections on food crises past abstract world food crises are relatively rare events occurring roughly three times a century but they also tend to be regular events every three decades or so suggesting there is an underlying cyclical cause if so far sighted donor and government investments in raising agricultural productivity and policies on behalf of stable food production and prices might go a long way to preventing food crises in the future preventing food crises rather than trying to cope after the fact with their impact on the poor is the only way to avoid substantial perhaps permanent damage to the welfare of poor households lessons from the world food crises in 1972 73 and in 2007 08 especially lessons from how the world rice market functioned point the way toward improved food policy management at national and international levels in the future

surprise party estimating the consequences of unexpected presidential election results alesina s quarterly journal of economics 102 651 678 1987 influential model of presidential elections with ideologically motivated parties attributes higher growth and lower unemployment under democratic presidents to the surprise inflation a democratic victory entails in contrast to the published literature we test this hypothesis using calcula tions of presidential election surprises consistent with the assumption of rational economic actors we confront the econometric complications attending a time series approach tak ing into account economic growth dynamics we ultimately fail to confirm the hypothesis that the level of uncertainty associated with presidential election results has an effect on economic outcomes

the phillips curve the persistence of inflation and the lucas critique evidence from exchange rate regimes comment we present evidence from the united states and the united kingdom that the persistence of price inflation is significantly higher under managed exchange rate regimes than under gold based fixed exchange rate regimes these differences are also reflected in expectations augmented phillips curves we use a two country macro model with forward looking price setters to demonstrate that higher monetary accommodation of inflation and exchange rate accommodation of inflation differentials increase inflation persistence the evidence does not contradict this hypothesis it supports the hypothesis of forward looking price setters and highlights the empirical significance of the lucas critique jel e31 e42 f33

the effects of domestic rice market interventions outside business as usual conditions for imported rice prices the philippine government intervenes in the domestic rice market through the imposition of import tariffs and the provision of producer and consumer subsidies while policymakers are aware that these programmes come with allocative efficiency costs they justify the programmes on the grounds that they insulate the domestic economy from unexpected price spikes in the international rice market an interesting matter for policy evaluation is to quantify the insulation benefit that the programmes provide in circumstances of sudden severe import price spikes to examine this question we undertake a dynamic computable general equilibrium cge simulation in which the philippines is subject to an external rice price shock we find that the insulation benefit of the support programmes under a 2008 like event is worth approximately 0 10 of real consumption however the cost of insuring against these price spikes is significant we estimate the annual cost of the rice market interventions at approximately 0 40