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...
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 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...
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
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
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...
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...