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Category: Development

Published February 10, 2011

International Development Job at Maryland Public Policy

The School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park is seeking a scholar (rank open: tenure, tenure track, or professor of the practice) whose academic background and professional achievements make her/him a likely future leader in our program in international development policy, one of the fastest growing multidisciplinary teaching and research areas at the School. Salary is competitive.

Applicants should have a PhD (or equivalent terminal degree) with a specialization in public policy, development ethics, economics, law, political economy, political science, social development, or other development-related area, or anticipate receiving such a degree before the academic year 2011-12. The School has particular interest in individuals with substantial international development experience, either as a scholar with experience in the field, or as a scholar-practitioner engaged in U.S. governmental, multilateral, non-governmental, or non-profit development institutions. Preference will be given to candidates willing and able to advise our growing number of PhD students in international development and to help lead the International Development specialization.

The University of Maryland School of Public Policy is a top-ranked graduate school of public policy and management with a distinguished faculty of scholars and practitioners. The School offers a Master of Public Policy degree primarily for pre-career students, a Master of Public Management degree primarily for mid-career students, and a Masters in Public Policy and Engineering. There is a small and selective PhD program for outstanding emerging scholars. The School also offers executive (degree and non-degree) programs for career executives in federal, state, and international agencies. The University of Maryland is located inside the Washington Beltway, within 30 minutes of federal agencies, international institutions, and many non-governmental, non-profit, and private policy-research organizations.

For best consideration, applications should be received by February 28, 2011. Application review will begin February 28 and continue until the position is filled. Applicant materials should include a letter of interest describing the candidate’s qualifications, a C.V. including the names and contact information for at least three references, a recent publication or writing sample, and a summary of teaching experience. Go to http://jobs.umd.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=53569 to apply or go to http://jobs.umd.edu and search for the position. Application materials sent outside of the online system will not be accepted. Questions should be directed to msppidev2011@umd.edu. The appointment is anticipated to begin in August 2011.

As an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer, the School particularly encourages and welcomes applications from women, minority candidates, and persons with disabilities.

(HT: ERN Professional Announcements.)

Published February 7, 2011

Food Prices and Urban Households

Over the past few weeks, I have written extensively about the twin issues of rising food prices and food price volatility.

It all began with this post, in which I explained the difference between rising food prices and food price volatility and which came as a result of people frequently misusing the concept of food price volatility in the media, both mainstream and social.

Continue readingFood Prices and Urban Households
Published February 3, 2011

Betting the House on Food Prices

I posted earlier this week about speculation on food markets by linking to a post on another blog which discussed how speculation and arbitrage may help enhance food security.

In response to my post on speculation, Ed Carr — whose new book just came out this week; I am looking forward to blogging about it in the next few weeks — wrote a post in which he discussed the convergence between the quantitative findings discussed in my paper with Chris Barrett and David Just on food price volatility and his own qualitative findings.

Commenting the empirical finding that price volatility hurts the wealthiest 40 percent of households but benefits the poorest of the poor in our paper on the welfare impacts of food price volatility, Ed writes:

“I would bet my house that the upper 40 percent of the population is that segment of the population living in urban areas and/or wealthy enough to be purchasing large amounts of processed food.”

To which I say, tongue in cheek: “Hand over the keys to my new vacation home in South Carolina, Ed.”

Joking apart, the upper 40 percent of the income distribution in our data are all rural households (we use four rounds of the publicly available Ethiopian Rural Household Survey data), and they are still pretty poor. Contrary to Ed’s conjecture, these households tend to be hurt by price volatility because they are producers and therefore net sellers of most of (if not all) the seven commodities retained for analysis (i.e., coffee, maize, beans, wheat, teff, barley, sorghum).

This is a counterintuitive result, but it makes sense, both theoretically and intuitively. Sandmo’s (1971) classic results states that when producers face uncertainty over the price at which they will be able to sell their output once it is produced, they will underproduce in an effort to hedge against price uncertainty.

But price uncertainty is precisely what we mean by price volatility, and I think Ed may have mistaken rising food prices for food price volatility since his reasoning corresponds to what we know about the welfare impacts of rising food prices. I am putting the more detailed (and lengthy) argument under the fold.

Continue readingBetting the House on Food Prices