Agricultural and Applied Economics—Without Apology
Last week, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations released its much-ballyhooed State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011 (SOFI). If you don’t have time to read all 55 pages of the SOFI, you can find the executive summary here, but be forewarned that the link opens a .pdf document.
In honor of World Food Day 2011, and given my interest in food policy as it relates to developing countries, I wanted to spend some time discussing the SOFI’s conclusions.
What happens to economic growth when governments tinker with prices in order to ensure higher prices to producers or, as is more common in developing countries, lower prices to consumers?
The University of Adelaide’s Kym Anderson and Markus Brückner, who both do excellent work, answer this question in a recent VoxEU column:
That is the title of a new book by my friend and colleague Don Taylor, who also regularly blogs over at The Incidental Economist. I have been hearing about this book for quite some time now, and I am happy it is finally out.
In his prologue, Don writes: