Purpose This chapter examines the long-run behavior of real food prices and the impact of food prices on poor and vulnerable households. It also examines the price policy responses of governments to high and volatile food prices, and the impact of food prices and policies on the poorest in the...

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...

Agricultural trade is vitally important for achieving the goal of ending hunger by 2030 enshrined in the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). While trade is frequently seen as posing threats to this vitally important goal, it can in fact play a major role in achieving it. Trade helps in a...

Since Amartya Sen’s famous work on Poverty and Famines, economists have understood that policy responses to food market shocks should be guided by changes in households’ incomes and access to food, rather than by overall food availability. Perhaps because the household-level impacts are not...