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Category: Politics

Published November 28, 2011

DC Folks: Talk on Food Prices and Food Riots at the CGD on Monday, December 5

I will be giving the Center for Global Development’s Massachusetts Avenue Development Seminar next Monday, December 5, 2011, at 4 pm. In case anyone would like to meet beforehand, I am free in late morning and early afternoon, so please drop me an email.

Here is the announcement for the seminar:

The Center for Global Development presents
a Massachusetts Avenue Development Seminar (MADS) on

Food Prices and Riots:
Estimating How the Level and Volatility of Food Prices Shape Social Unrest in the Developing World, 1990-2011

Featuring
Marc Bellemare
Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University

With Discussant
Ed Carr
Associate Professor
Department of Geography, University of South Carolina
and
American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow
United States Agency for International Development

Monday, December 5, 2011
4:00pm–5:30pm

at

Center for Global Development
1800 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Third Floor, Washington, DC
*Please bring photo identification*

Paper Abstract:  Can food prices cause political unrest? Throughout history, riots have frequently broken out, ostensibly as a consequence of high food prices. This paper studies the impact of food prices on political unrest using monthly data at the international level. Results indicate that in the period 1990-2011, food price increases appear to have led to increases in political unrest, whereas food price volatility has been associated with decreased political unrest.

Published November 17, 2011

Super Committee: Cut US Farm Subsidies, Not Foreign Aid; Pass Go, Save $20 Billion

So says the Center for Global Development’s (CGD) Kimberly Ann Elliott in a recent post:

As a start, CGD colleague Connie Veillette and John Norris from the Center for American Progress identified five ways to “make aid more effective and save more than $2 billion.” Three of their five recommendations involve cuts in subsidies for farmers, shippers, and NGOs that would make US food aid policies more flexible, responsive, and development-friendly… and save a half billion dollars. In addition, Connie and John recommended cutting at least $1.5 billion from farm subsidies, which go disproportionately to larger, richer producers.

Increasingly in the congressional debate, the $5 billion in “direct payments” that go to farmers every year — regardless of crop prices or yields, and on top of any other subsidies they receive — have moved squarely into the budget-cutting bulls eye. Eliminating those payments, which were created almost two decades ago as part of a failed effort to reform farm subsidies, is certainly justified, but those payments are delinked from production and cutting them would do little to reduce the global distortions imposed on developing-country producers. There is also another $10-12 billion in trade-distorting subsidies that undermine incentives to invest in agriculture in developing countries – those should not escape the budget ax.

I have addressed this topic many times on this blog in order to make the exact same point Connie Veillette and John Norris make. In chronological order:

Continue readingSuper Committee: Cut US Farm Subsidies, Not Foreign Aid; Pass Go, Save $20 Billion
Published November 9, 2011

The Causes and Consequences of Famine (Slides)

Last Wednesday, I took part in a panel discussion at Wake Forest University titled “The ‘F’-Word: Famine in the 21st Century,” on the current famine in the Horn of Africa.

The other two participants were Charles Kennedy and Sarah Lischer, both professors in the political science department at Wake Forest. Sarah talked about the humanitarian consequences of the current famine, most notably the refugees coming into Kenya. Charles talked about US foreign policy in the area. I learned a lot from both their presentations, given that they covered topics that I was not familiar with.

Here are the slides I used for my talk, which was titled “The Causes and Consequences of Famine.” The link opens a .pdf document. Note that this was not a research seminar, but a talk aimed at a general public.