Monnet Gbakou

The Impact of Food and Economic Crises on Diet and Nutrition

Abstract The conventional view is that inelastic demand makes consumption of staple foods resilient to major price and income shocks. We explore the dietary and nutritional implications of a major shock in Bulgaria in the mid-1990s with data from before, during and after the shock. While demand for foodstuffs may remain relatively unchanging in environments characterised by stable food prices and incomes, economic crises and significant price spikes appeared to induce dramatic changes in price and income demand elasticities. We therefore suggest the use of caution in basing policy prescriptions on randomly available pre-crisis simulations.

A Right Price for Rice? Côte D’Ivoire Insights into the Welfare Implications of the ‘Global Food Crisis’

Abstract Using 2008 LSMS data for Cote d’Ivoire, we study the welfare implications of the price increase of key imported staple food – rice – and consider the consumption smoothing effect of locally produced food and cash crop varieties. While middle-income households are found to be hardest hit by a price shock, the poorest appear to be immune to it. When both cash and food crop production is taken into account, the negative impact becomes negligible. We find interesting income reallocations from richer to poorer households, which can potentially be generalised across similar African countries.

La stabilité macroéconomique conditionne-t-elle l'impact des IDE sur la croissance économique ? Une étude empirique sur des pays d'Afrique, d'Amérique latine, des Caraïbes et d'Asie

Cette etude teste la relation entre les flux d’IDE entrants et la croissance economique pour des pays en developpement distribues dans trois zones geographiques sur la periode 1990-2005. La methode des 3SLS est utilisee pour deriver nos resultats. Notre principale conclusion est que les IDE affectent positivement la croissance pour les pays d’Afrique et ceux d’Amerique latine/Caraibes. A contrario, l’instabilite macroeconomique exerce une influence negative et limite l’effet des IDE en Afrique.