Food Price Policy in an Era of Market Instability ─ A Political Economy Analysis

Food price volatility is one of the major challenges facing current and future global food systems. Since 2006, global food prices have fluctuated greatly around an increasing trend and price spikes were observed for key food commodities such as rice, wheat, and maize. The full or partial transmission of these global food price changes to individual developing countries, together with domestic food price changes, caused by domestic factors such as extreme weather events and market disruptions, caused governments to respond in a variety of ways. While there is ample description of the nature, content, and causes of food price fluctuations during the last 5 to 7 years, very little is known about the processes that led to policy responses or the relative power and behaviour of the participating stakeholder groups. Understanding how and why governments responded as they did is important to enhance the existing knowledge of the political economy of food price policy and to assist governments in their policy-making as they confront future food price fluctuations. This book presents results from political economy studies of food price policy in 14 developing countries as well as the United States and the European Union.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Graduate School Professor at Cornell University and Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen University

PPer Pinstrup-Andersen is Graduate School Professor at Cornell University and Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen University. He is Chairman of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security (HLPE) and Vice chairman of the World Economic Forum's Council on food Security. He is past Chairman of the Science Council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and Past President of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA). He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Agricultural Economics Association. He has served as the International Food Policy Research Institute's Director General, as an economist at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, and as distinguished professor at Wageningen University. He is the 2001 World Food Prize Laureate and the recipient of several awards for his research. His publications include more than 450 books, articles, and papers.