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My newest article, “The Welfare Impacts of Commodity Price Volatility: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia,” coauthored with Chris Barrett and David Just, is finally available on the American Journal of Agricultural Economics‘ website.

Here is the abstract:

How does commodity price volatility affect the welfare of rural households in developing countries, for whom hedging and consumption smoothing are often difficult? When governments choose to intervene in order to stabilize commodity prices, as they often do, who gains the most? This article develops an analytical framework and an empirical strategy to answer those questions, along with illustrative empirical results based on panel data from rural Ethiopian households. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that the welfare gains from eliminating price volatility are increasing in household income, making food price stabilization a distributionally regressive policy in this context.

By “newest article,” I really mean “most recently accepted article,” for I have been working on this paper since early 2007. Because the paper innovates on both the theoretical and empirical fronts, and because it makes a point of fundamental importance for policy, I think this is my finest piece of research so far.

For a more complete discussion of this paper, see here.

(Note: This is the first of a two-part guest post by Catherine Herrold, a PhD candidate at Duke University whose dissertation looks at the relationship between philanthropic foundations and the Egyptian revolution. The second part will be posted on Wednesday morning.)

Over the long term I am optimistic for Egypt. But our transition will last at least 10 to 15 years. In the meantime I am pessimistic.

This was a common sentiment expressed by civil society leaders during the first year of Egypt’s democratic transition. From January 2010 through July 2012, I conducted 75 interviews with staff of Egyptian NGOs, Egyptian philanthropic foundations, and international donors operating in Egypt. All felt that civil society had an important role to play in advancing Egypt’s political transition in the wake of the January 25, 2011 revolution.

None, however, predicted that the transition would be swift. Rather, they all agreed that while the revolution was sudden, substantive transformation would take time. They also pointed out that while change at the top levels of political power was crucial, reform would only be complete when marginalized groups were able to fully claim their economic, social, and political rights.

Historically, farm bill politics relied on an urban-rural logroll in which farm state lawmakers voted for food stamps in exchange for urban votes on agricultural subsidies. This year’s debate shows how much this has changed. Republican efforts to cut nutrition programs, including passage of an amendment adding strict work requirements as a condition of eligibility, all but assured Democratic opposition. When ultra-conservative Republicans split ranks because they felt these cuts did not go far enough, they effectively killed the bill. …

Splitting off farm subsidies from nutrition programs would be enormously consequential. In political terms, it would formally tear apart the urban-rural coalition that has been in place since the 1960s. In policy terms it would expose SNAP funding to deep cuts so long as Republicans hold a majority in the House. However, breaking the coalition would also expose farm subsidies to cuts as rural lawmakers could no longer lean on urban members for support. Interestingly, neither side wants to see less money going to its constituents yet this may be what happens as polarized policymaking makes cross-partisan coalitions less stable.

From a fascinating post last week by Johns Hopkins political scientist Adam Sheingate over at The Monkey Cage.

Adam is also the author of the 2003 book The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State, in which he looked at agricultural protection from a comparative perspective and concluded that agricultural lobbies are not as powerful as one commonly hears.