Both papers will be published in the November issue of the Development Policy Review.
The first article is by Andrew Dorward, of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and is titled “Getting Real about Food Prices”:
The 2008 spike in world grain prices is widely recognised to have had serious impacts on food security and poverty, but these high grain prices are commonly described as low in historical terms — an inconsistency resulting from the use of advanced- and global-economy price indices in calculating real prices. This ignores the high share of food in poor people’s expenditures and the indirect effects of income growth on expenditure patterns of rich consumers. Poor consumers have not experienced the same falls in real food prices and are more vulnerable to price shocks. Different price indices must be developed to take account of differences between consumer groups.
The second article is by fellow Cornell alum Jo Swinnen, of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, and is titled “The Right Price of Food”:
Only a few years ago the widely shared view was that low food prices were a curse to developing countries and the poor. Their dramatic increase in 2006-8 appears to have altered this view fundamentally. High food prices are now judged to have a devastating effect on developing countries and the world’s poor — a reversal of opinion that raises questions about the old and the new arguments and the proposed remedies, and also about the causes of this dramatic turnaround in analysis and policy conclusions. This article puts these changes in perspective and discusses their potential implications.