Anna D'Souza

Rising Food Prices and Coping Strategies: Household-Level Evidence from Afghanistan

This paper investigates the impact of rising wheat prices -- during the 2007/08 global food crisis -- on food security in Afghanistan. Exploiting the temporal stratification of a unique nationally-representative household survey, the analysis finds evidence of large declines in real per capita food consumption and in food security (per capita calorie intake and household dietary diversity) corresponding to the price shocks. The data reveal smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption, suggesting that households trade off quality for quantity as they move toward staple foods and away from nutrient-rich foods such as meat and vegetables. In addition, there is increased demand in the face of price increases (Giffen good properties) for wheat products in urban areas. This study improves on country-level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household wellbeing before and during the height of the global food crisis in one of the worlds poorest, most food-insecure countries.

Food Insecurity in Vulnerable Populations: Coping with Food Price Shocks in Afghanistan

Based on data from Afghanistan collected prior to and during the 2007-2008 food price crisis, this paper illustrates that caloric intake is an ineffectual indicator for monitoring the onset of food insecurity. Unconditional Quantile Regression estimates indicate that the most vulnerable of households, which cannot afford to make substantial cuts to calories, exhibit no decline in caloric intake in response to increasing wheat prices. In contrast, households with high-calorie diets experience large declines. The estimates also reveal declines in dietary diversity across the entire distribution of households. The most vulnerable households may be sacrificing diet quality to maintain calories, with the potential for serious and long-term health consequences.

The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention: Changing the Currents of Trade

This paper examines the effects of a watershed anti-corruption initiative – the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention – on international trade flows. I exploit variation in the timing of implementation by exporters and in the level of corruption of importers to quantify the Convention’s effects on bilateral exports. Using a large panel of country pairs to control for confounding global and national trends and shocks, I find that, on average, the Convention caused a reduction in exports from signatory countries to high corruption importers relative to low corruption importers. This suggests that by creating large penalties for foreign bribery, the Convention indirectly increased transaction costs between signatory countries and high corruption importers. I also find evidence that the Convention’s effects differed across product categories. *** A revised version of this article was accepted for publication in the Journal of Development Economics in December 2010, available online***

Conflict, Food Price Shocks, and Food Insecurity: The Experience of Afghan Households

Using nationally-representative household survey data and confidential geo-coded data on violence, we examine the linkages between conflict, food insecurity, and food price shocks in Afghanistan. Spatial mappings of the raw data reveal large variations in levels of food insecurity and conflict across the country; surprisingly, food insecurity is not higher in conflict areas. In a multivariate regression framework, we exploit the 2008 spike in wheat flour prices to estimate differential effects on household food security – measured by calorie intake and the real value of food consumed – based on the level of conflict in the province where the household is located. We find robust evidence that households in provinces with higher levels of conflict experience larger declines in food security than households in provinces with lower levels of conflict. Therefore while conflict may not be the driving factor in overall levels of food insecurity in Afghanistan, it may limit the coping mechanisms available to households in the face of rising food prices. Gaining a better understanding of such linkages and knowing the spatial distribution of food insecurity can serve to inform policymakers interested in targeting scarce resources to vulnerable populations, for example, through the placement of strategic grain reserves or targeted food assistance programs.

The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention: Changing the currents of trade

This paper examines how criminalizing the act of bribing a foreign public official affects international trade flows using a watershed global anti-corruption initiative — the 1997 OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. I exploit variation in the timing of implementation by exporting countries and in the level of corruption of importing countries to quantify the Conventions effects on bilateral exports. I use a large panel of country pairs to control for confounding global and national trends and shocks. I find that, on average, the Convention caused a reduction in exports from signatory countries to high corruption importers relative to low corruption importers. In particular, we observe a 5.7% relative decline in bilateral exports to importers that lie one standard deviation lower on the Worldwide Governance Indicators corruption index. This suggests that by creating large penalties for foreign bribery, the Convention indirectly increased transaction costs between signatory countries and high corruption importers. The Convention may have induced OECD firms to divert their exports to less corrupt countries; while non-OECD firms not bound by the Convention may have increased their exports to corrupt countries. I also find evidence that the Conventions effects differed across product categories.

Food Security in Afghanistan: Household-level Evidence from the 2007-08 Food Price Crisis

This paper investigates the impact of rising food prices – during the 2007/08 global food crisis – on food security in Afghanistan. Exploiting the temporal stratification of a unique nationally-representative household survey, we find evidence of large declines in real per capita food consumption and in food security (i.e., per capita calorie intake and household dietary diversity) corresponding to the price shocks. The data reveal smaller price elasticities with respect to calories than with respect to food consumption, suggesting that households trade off quality for quantity as they move towards staple foods and away from nutrient-rich foods such as meat and vegetables. In addition, we observe Giffen good properties, i.e., increased demand in the face of price increases, for staple foods (wheat) in urban areas. Our work improves upon country-level simulation studies by providing estimates of actual household wellbeing before and during the height of the global food crisis in one of the world’s poorest, most food-insecure countries.

Food Security and Wheat Prices in Afghanistan: A Distribution-Sensitive Analysis of Household-Level Impacts

This paper investigates the impact of increases in wheat flour prices on household food security using unique nationally-representative data collected in Afghanistan from 2007 to 2008. It uses a new estimator, the Unconditional Quantile Regression estimator, based on influence functions, to examine the marginal effects of price increases at different locations on the distributions of several food security measures. The estimates reveal that the negative marginal effect of a price increase on food consumption is two and a half times larger for households that can afford to cut the value of food consumption (75th quantile) than for households at the bottom (25th quantile) of the food-consumption distribution. Similarly, households with diets high in calories reduce intake substantially, but those at the bottom of the calorie distribution (25th quantile) make very small changes in intake as a result of the price increases. In contrast, households at the bottom of the dietary diversity distribution make the largest adjustments in the quality of their diets, since such households often live at subsistence levels and cannot make large cuts in caloric intake without suffering serious health consequences. These results provide empirical evidence that when faced with staple-food price increases, food-insecure households sacrifice quality (diversity) in order to protect calories. The large differences in behavioral responses of households that lie at the top and bottom of these distributions suggest that policy analyses relying solely on ordinary least squares estimates may be misleading.

Violence, Political Instability, and International Trade: Evidence from Kenya’s Cut Flower Sector

We assess whether and how violence and political instability affect trade between developed and developing countries considering the special case of EU imports of Kenyan roses after the 2007/08 post-election violence and political instability in Kenya. Using the Rotterdam model to estimate EU demand for roses from Kenya and other global competitors, we find evidence of a structural change in the import growth rate for Kenya, approximately equivalent to an 18.6% tariff. These results highlight the importance of non-tariff barriers to trade and contribute to the growing literature on the role of insecurity and instability in hindering international trade.

Intra-Household Nutritional Inequities in Rural Bangladesh

Using novel data from rural Bangladesh reporting individual-level food consumption and anthropometric measures, we find substantial inequities in the intrahousehold distribution of calories and nutrients, with male household heads reported to consume disproportionately large shares. There are also smaller body mass index shortfalls for heads relative to their spouses. Further, lower economic well-being and women’s disempowerment are associated with more inequitable calorie distributions. These findings have implications for the measurement of undernourishment, where aggregate household-level data misclassify the undernourishment status of nearly a quarter of the rural Bangladeshi population due to intrahousehold inequities.

How Well Do Household-Level Data Characterize Undernourishment? Evidence from Bangladesh

Although undernourishment is characteristic of the individual, measurement has centered on household-level statistics that make strong assumptions regarding the equitable distribution of calories across household members. Utilizing a novel data source from Bangladesh that reports individual-level calorie intake, we investigate whether households distribute food equitably. We find substantial inequities in the intra-household distribution of calories, with household heads consuming inequitably large shares of total household calories. Furthermore, we find more inequitable calorie distributions among undernourished, poor households. Importantly, these results do not appear to be driven by assumptions about the energy requirements of household members. Due to the inequities, aggregate household-level data misclassify the nutritional status of a large share of the population. These findings have implications for food and nutrition program targeting, which often is based on household-level data.