How Do Governments Respond to Food Price Spikes? Lessons from the Past

Food prices in international markets spiked upwards in 2008, doubling or more in a matter of months. Evidence is still being compiled on policy responses over the following two years, but new time series estimates of government intervention for the previous five decades allow insights into past policy responses to price fluctuations and spikes. This paper reviews the distortionary impacts of policies used by governments attempting to stabilize their domestic food markets. It then focuses on policy responses in the mid-1970s, as reflected in various annual indicators of distortions to producer and consumer incentives, before drawing out some policy lessons.Commodity price stabilization policies, Domestic market insulation, Distorted incentives, Agricultural and trade policies, Trade restrictiveness indexes

Trade barrier volatility and domestic price stabilization : evidence from agriculture

National barriers to trade are often varied to insulate domestic markets from international price variability, especially following a sudden spike. This paper explores the extent of that behavior by governments in the case of agricultural products, particularly food staples whose prices have spiked three times over the past four decades. It does so using new annual estimates since 1955 of agricultural price distortions in 75 countries, updated to 2008. Responses by food importers to upward price spikes are shown to be as substantial as those by food exporters, thereby weakening the domestic price-stabilizing effect of intervention by exporters. They also add to the transfer of welfare to food-surplus from food-deficit countries -- the opposite of what is usually thought of when considering inter-sector trade retaliation. Phasing down World Trade Organization-bound import tariffs toward their applied rates would help reduce the legal opportunities for food-deficit countries to raise their import restrictions when international prices slump. To date there is no parallel discipline in the World Trade Organization that limits increases in export restrictions when prices spike upward, however. Bringing such discipline through new World Trade Organization rules could help alleviate the extent to which government responses to exogenous price spikes exacerbate those spikes.Markets and Market Access,Emerging Markets,Food&Beverage Industry,Economic Theory&Research,Climate Change Economics

Trade Barrier Volatility and Agricultural Price Stabilization

National barriers to trade are often varied to insulate domestic markets from international price variability. This paper explores the extent of that behavior by governments using estimates of agricultural price distortions in 75 countries. Newly estimated price transmission elasticities are quite low, albeit slightly higher since than before 1985. In the case of extreme upward price spikes, trade policy responses by food importers are as substantial as those of exporting countries. The domestic price-stabilizing effect of intervention by each group is thereby weakened by the other groupÂ’s response, suggesting more-effective domestic policy options need to be considered instead of varying trade barriers.Commodity price stabilization, Price transmission, Domestic market insulation, Distorted incentives, Agricultural trade policies

How do governments respond to food price spikes ? lessons from the past

Food prices in international markets spiked upward in 2008, doubling or more in a matter of months. Evidence is still being compiled on policy responses over the following two years, but lessons can be learned from the price spike in 1973, the magnitude and speed of which were similar to those experienced around the 2008 spike. In developing countries, policy responses to the earlier spike lowered the (negative) nominal assistance coefficient for agriculture by one-third between 1972 and 1974 before it was returned to the same level by 1976. That was twice the extent of the fall and recovery of the (positive) nominal assistance coefficient for high-income countries. However, the trade and welfare effects of those changes were much less for developing than high-income countries, suggesting the dispersion of distortion rates among farm industries decreased in developing countries. The adjustments were virtually all due to suspension and then reinstatement of import restrictions, with changes in export taxation by developing countries playing an additional (but minor) role during 1972-74. This beggar-thy-neighbor dimension of each government’s food policies is worrying because it reduces the role that trade between nations can play in bringing stability to the world’s food markets. More effort appears to be needed before a multilateral agreement to desist can be reached.Emerging Markets,Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Climate Change Economics,Food&Beverage Industry

Foreign direct investment and exchange rate regimes

The paper uses a comprehensive data set with bilateral direct investment flows and establishes the influence of the de-facto exchange rate regime for FDI flows. We find a strong and significant effect from fixed rates on bilateral FDI flows in developed economies, but no significant effect for developing countries. There is thus no general and uniform impact of stable exchange rates on FDI. We provide several possible explanations for this difference. --Foreign Direct Investment,Multinational Enterprises,Exchanges Rate Regimes

Foreign Direct Investment and Exchange Rate Regimes

The paper uses a comprehensive data set with bilateral direct investment flows and establishes the influence of the de-facto exchange rate regime for FDI flows. We find a strong and significant effect from fixed rates on bilateral FDI flows in developed economies, but no significant effect for developing countries. There is thus no general and uniform impact of stable exchange rates on FDI. We provide several possible explanations for this difference.Foreign Direct Investment, Multinational Enterprises, Exchanges Rate Regimes

Economic contributions and characteristics of grapes and wine in AustraliaÂ’s wine regions

Over the past two decades, the Australian wine industry has been through a remarkable period of export-oriented growth. Even when vines for drying and table grapes are included, the vineyard area in Australia has trebled over the 20 vintages to 2008, the biggest surge in Australia’s history. In the first half of the 1980s, barely 2 percent of the country’s wine production was exported, which was less than the volume it imported. Today, nearly two-thirds of Australia’s production is exported – and production itself has increased nearly four-fold since the early 1980s. Prepared for the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation (GWRDC), Winemakers Federation of Australia (WFA) and the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation (AWBC). The authors are grateful for funding from GWRDC (Project Number UA08/04) and the University of Adelaide’s Wine2030 project, and for helpful comments from Leanne Webb of CSIRO, Jim Fortune, and members of the project’s Industry Reference Group.

Global Distortions to Key Agricultural Commodity Markets

Distorted incentives, agricultural and trade policy reforms, national agricultural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q17, Q18,

Global wine markets, 1860 to 2016

Until recently, most grape-based wine was consumed close to where it was produced, and mostly that was in Europe. Now more than two-fifths of all wine consumed globally is produced in another country, including in the Southern Hemisphere, the USA and Asia. This latest edition of global wine statistics not only updates data to 2016 but also adds another century of data. The motivation to assemble those historical data was to enable comparisons between the current and the previous globalization waves. This unique database reveals that, even though Europe’s vineyards were devastated by vine diseases and the pest phylloxera from the 1860s, most ‘New World’ countries remained net importers of wine until late in the nineteenth century. Some of the world’s leading wine economists and historians have contributed to and drawn on this database to examine the development of national wine market developments before, during and in between the two waves of globalization. Their initial analyses cover all key wine-producing and -consuming countries using a common methodology to explain long-term trends and cycles in national wine production, consumption, and trade

ANNUAL ESTIMATES OF ASIAN DISTORTIONS TO AGRICULTURAL INCENTIVES

Distorted incentives, agricultural and trade policy reforms, national agricultural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, International Relations/Trade, F13, F14, Q17, Q18,