Working Paper
The Economywide Impacts and Risks of Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy Programme
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...
Blog
Getting Serious About Food
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...
Working Paper
The Impact of Food Price Volatility on Consumer Welfare in Cameroon
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...
Working Paper
Ethiopian Famines 1973-1985
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...
Working Paper
Feeding China
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...
Working Paper
Revisiting the Global Food Architecture
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...
Blog
A food crisis was brewing even before the Ukraine war – but taking these three steps could help the most vulnerable
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...
Working Paper
Rights-based Approach to Development
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...
Blog
UNU-WIDER @ 30
2015 marks the 30th anniversary of UNU-WIDER. The Institute opened its doors in 1985. It has been quite a ride ever since. We have had thousands of...
Blog
From the Editor's Desk (May 2015)
May is always a hopeful month. With 18 hours of daylight we are all perky—especially the seagulls who swarm around Helsinki harbour. Here at UNU-WIDER...
Blog
The Political Economy of Food Price Policy - An Interview with Per Pinstrup-Andersen
by
Roger Williamson
May 2015
In this interview, Per Pinstrup-Andersen talks about the international project which has culminated in the book Food Price Policy in an Era of Market...
Working Paper
Income and price elasticities of demand in South Africa
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...
Blog
From the Editor’s Desk (February 2015)
February found UNU-WIDER busy sending out Calls for Papers on topics ranging from social protection to clean energy to discrimination and affirmative...
Working Paper
Helping Poor Farmers to Help Themselves
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...
Book
The Political Economy of Hunger
This book is the second of three volumes. Every year millions of people are losing their lives around the world, undeterred by the widespread opulence and remarkably higher per capita income, because of sporadic famines, endemic undernourishment, and...
Book
Nutrition and Poverty
This volume addresses issues arising from the definition and measurement of poverty in terms of nutritional status. A high degree of nutritional deprivation is considered to be an indicator of poverty. Hence the definition of an appropriate...
Working Paper
Food Security in the South Pacific Island Countries with Special Reference to the Fiji Islands
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...
Working Paper
Entitlement Failure from a Food Quality Perspective
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...
Working Paper
Realizing the Right to Food in South Asia
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...
Working Paper
The Political Economy of Food Price Policy in South Africa
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...
Book
Food Price Policy in an Era of Market Instability
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...