The impact of large-scale social protection interventions on grain prices in poor countries: Evidence from Ethiopia

The impact of large-scale social protection interventions on grain prices in poor countries: Evidence from Ethiopia

Author: Hoddinott, John F.

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2018-03-22

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13:

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There has long been concern that cash and in-kind transfers might affect prices in developing country food markets. While there have been a number of studies at highly aggregated levels, much less is known about the effects of cash transfers on local food prices and even less about how they compare to food transfers. We consider this issue in the context of a large social protection intervention, Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme. Using 12 months of price data from 233 localities and controlling for temporal, location, and market characteristics we find: Cash transfers have no effect on food prices. There is some evidence that food transfers reduce food prices. Maize transfers reduce aggregate grain prices, wheat transfers reduce the price of maize, and the negative effect of food transfers on food prices is larger in more remote markets. However, the magnitudes of these effects are trivially small, both in absolute and percentage terms.


Globalization and Poverty

Globalization and Poverty

Author: Ann Harrison

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 674

ISBN-13: 0226318001

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Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.


Payment modality preferences: Evidence from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme

Payment modality preferences: Evidence from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme

Author: Hirvonen, Kalle

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2018-10-23

Total Pages: 25

ISBN-13:

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Economists typically default to the assumption that cash is always preferable to an in-kind transfer. We extend the classic Southworth (1945) framework to predict under what conditions this assumption holds. We take the model to longitudinal household data from Ethiopia where a large-scale social safety net intervention – the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) – operates. Even though most PSNP payments are paid in cash, and even though the (temporal) transaction costs associated with food payments are higher than payments received as cash, the overwhelming majority of the beneficiary households prefer their payments only or partly in food. However, these preferences are neither homogeneous nor stable. Higher food prices induce shifts in preferences towards in-kind transfers, but more food secure households and those closer to food markets and to financial services prefer cash. There is suggestive evidence that preferences for food are also driven by self-control concerns.


Shock Waves

Shock Waves

Author: Stephane Hallegatte

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2015-11-23

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1464806748

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Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.


Boosting growth to end hunger by 2025: The role of social protection

Boosting growth to end hunger by 2025: The role of social protection

Author: Wouterse, Fleur Stephanie

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2018-10-23

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0896295982

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Social protection programs—public or private initiatives that aid the poor and protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks—can effectively be used to assist those trapped, or at the risk of being trapped, in chronic poverty. These programs aim to address chronic poverty through redistribution and protect vulnerable households from falling below the poverty line. Although investments in social protection programs are often motivated by equity concerns, they can also contribute to economic growth by, for example, encouraging savings, creating community assets, and addressing market imperfections. Despite their potential and proliferation, not enough is known about social protection programs in Africa. The 2017–2018 Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) reduces this knowledge gap by focusing on the potential of such programs on the continent and the corresponding opportunities and challenges. The chapters of the Report highlight the benefits of these programs, not only to their direct recipients but also others in the community through spillover effects. They also underscore the importance of appropriate design and sustainability to fully realize the potential of social protection programs.


Agrifood value chains in low-income countries

Agrifood value chains in low-income countries

Author: Bernard, T.

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org. [Author] [Author]

Published: 2024-05-30

Total Pages: 58

ISBN-13: 9251388229

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Recognizing that agrifood value chains (AFVCs) are essential to ensure food security and foster structural change, FAO seeks to reassess the array of policies and interventions needed to protect and strengthen AFVCs in low-income countries and fragile states. [Author] This White Paper aims to contribute to this initiative by shedding light on largely unaccounted-for market structures at midstream segments of AFVCs. [Author] Building on the field of Industrial Organization in economics, we develop a theoretical framework and a related simulation tool that one can inform with existing or specifically collected data. [Author] Simulation outcomes help predict how different types of shocks may affect key food security outcomes, under different levels of concentration in midstream segments of AFVCs. [Author] We illustrate this approach using data from the Ethiopian wheat AFVC in 2013. [Author]


The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty

The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789287042323

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The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty looks at the complex relationships between economic growth, poverty reduction and trade, and examines the challenges that poor people face in benefiting from trade opportunities. Written jointly by the World Bank Group and the WTO, the publication examines how trade could make a greater contribution to ending poverty by increasing efforts to lower trade costs, improve the enabling environment, implement trade policy in conjunction with other areas of policy, better manage risks faced by the poor, and improve data used for policy-making.


The Global Social Crisis

The Global Social Crisis

Author: United Nations

Publisher: UN

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13:

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During 2008-2009, the world experienced its worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The crisis followed the effects of the food and fuel price hikes in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, global output contracted by 2 per cent. This 2011 Report on the World Social Situation reviews the ongoing adverse social consequences of these crises after an overview of its causes and transmission.