Nicholas Minot

Growth in high-value agriculture in Asia and the emergence of vertical links with farmers.

1. Director, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division, International Food Policy Research Institute. 2. Research Fellow, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division, International Food Policy Research Institute. 3. Director, ILRI-IFPRI Joint Program on Livestock Market Opportunities and Senior Research Fellow, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division, International Food Policy Research Institute. 4. Senior Research Assistant, Markets, Trade, and Institutions Division, International Food Policy Research Institute.

Generating Disaggregated Poverty Maps: An Application to Vietnam

Previous research shows that geographic targeting in poverty programs is not accurate unless the geographic units are small. Household surveys, however, can rarely estimate poverty rates for more than 5--10 regions. This study uses data from Vietnam to illustrate a method for generating disaggregated poverty maps. First, the relationship between poverty and household indicators is estimated using survey data. Then, census data on those same indicators are used to estimate poverty rates for each of the 543 rural districts. The results indicate that Vietnamese poverty is concentrated in the north and in districts furthest from the coast and cities.

Export Liberalization and Household Welfare: The Case of Rice in Vietnam

Vietnam has rapidly become one of the three largest rice exporters in the world, in spite of a binding export quota. This article uses a multimarket spatial-equilibrium model to examine the effect of further liberalization on regional rice prices. Household data are then used to calculate the welfare impact of these price changes on different household groups. The results suggest that although rice export liberalization would raise food prices and exacerbate regional inequality, it would also increase average real income and reduce (slightly) the incidence and severity of poverty. We explore several explanations of these apparently paradoxical results. Copyright 1998, Oxford University Press.

Poverty Mapping with Aggregate Census Data: What is the Loss in Precision?

Spatially disaggregated maps of the incidence of poverty can be constructed by combining household survey data and census data. In some countries (notably China and India), national statistics agencies are reluctant, for reasons of confidentiality, to release household‐level census data, but they are generally more willing to release aggregated census data, such as village‐ or district‐level means. This paper examines the loss in precision associated with using aggregated census data instead of household‐level data to generate poverty estimates. The authors show analytically that using aggregated census data will result in poverty rates that are biased downward (upward) if the rate is below (above) 50%, and that the bias approaches zero as the poverty rate approaches zero, 50%, and 100%. Using data from Vietnam, it is found that the mean absolute error in estimating district‐level poverty rates is 2.5 percentage points if the census data are aggregated to the enumeration‐area level means, and 3–4 percentage points if the data are aggregated to commune or district level. Finally, the authors propose a method for reducing the error using variances calculated from the census. When this approach is applied to the Vietnam data, this method can cut the size of the aggregation errors by around 75%.

Adjustment of wheat production to market reform in Egypt

Drawing on the results of a survey of 800 Egyptian wheat farmers, this chapter analyzes the patterns of wheat production and marketing (after the reforms of 1987), government procurement of domestic wheat, and the price responsiveness of wheat supply and input demand. The results indicate that most of the wheat produced is consumed in rural areas, which explains why only a small portion of national production is available for purchase by the government. Given observed price responsiveness, the study finds that achieving the goal of self-sufficiency through price policy would be costly and ill-advised.

Distributional and Nutritional Impact of Devaluation in Rwanda

Introduction Since the early 1980s, many less developed countries have been obliged to implement macroeconomic adjustment programs in order to deal with large current account deficits, inflation, and stagnant economic growth. One of the more controversial elements of these programs is currency devaluation. In theory, devaluation addresses the problem of external deficits by raising the price of tradable goods (exports, imports, and close substitutes), thus stimulating production of these goods and dampening demand for them. Devaluation, however, is unpopular in developing countries and has been criticized by some researchers for being contractionary, inflationary, ineffective in reducing external deficits, and regressive in its impact on income distribution. The dramatic effects of the 1994 collapse of the Mexican peso brought this topic into the popular press and further stimulated interest among researchers. The controversy surrounding devaluation has generated a significant body of theoretical and empirical research on the macroeconomic effects of currency devaluation. The distributional impact of devaluation, however, is more difficult to study. Economic theory yields ambiguous results. In the short run, devaluation should benefit both labor and owners of capital in the tradable goods sector at the expense of those in the nontradable goods sector. In the medium term, labor movement should equalize wage rates across sectors for the same type of labor. As a result, the distributional impact depends on spending patterns: households with a high propensity to consume imports and other tradable goods lose relative to those with a low propensity. In the long run, labor will gain if tradable goods are more labor intensive, while owners of capital will gain if tradable goods are capital intensive. Thus, the impact of devaluation on the functional distribution of income depends on spending and

Food Price Volatility in Africa: Has it Really Increased?

The food price crisis of 2007–2008 and recent resurgence of food prices have focused increasing attention on the causes and consequences of food price volatility in international food markets and the developing world, particularly in Africa south of the Sahara. In this paper, we examine the patterns and trends in food price volatility using an unusually rich database of African staple food prices. We find that international grain prices have become more volatile in recent years (2007–2010) but no evidence that food price volatility has increased in the region. This contrasts with the widespread view that food prices have become more volatile in the region since the global food crisis of 2007–2008. In addition, the results suggest that price volatility is lower for processed and tradable foods than for nontradable foods, that volatility is lower in the largest (usually the capital) cities than in secondary cities, and that maize price volatility is actually higher in countries with the most active intervention to stabilize maize prices. These findings suggest that greater attention should be given to the (high) level of food prices in the region rather than volatility per se, that regional and international trade can play a useful role in reducing food price volatility, and that traditional food price stabilization efforts may be counterproductive.

EVIDENCE AND IMPLICATIONS OF NON-TRADABILITY OF FOOD STAPLES IN TANZANIA 1983-1998

Economic reform programmes assume that major goods are tradable, such that depreciation of the real exchange rate raises the value of output compared to factor costs in domestic currency. In Tanzania, major food staples that account for most real income are non-tradables in at least one-quarter of the country. This conclusion is demonstrated and the implications are assessed for the constraints imposed on macroeconomic-led adjustment strategies.

The Impact of Food Price Shocks in Uganda: First-Order Versus Long-Run Effects

We look at the immediate effects of these shocks faced by households in Uganda on their poverty and well-being. In addition, we look at the economywide impact in the long run when all markets have settled at a new equilibrium. We find that in the short run, poverty has increased substantially. However, in the longer run, we find welfare levels of rural farm households in particular to rise sharply, primarily as a result of increased returns to farm labor and agricultural land coupled with improved market prices for output sold.

On Measuring the Value of a Nonmarket Good Using Market Data

Our purpose is to present in detail numerical methods of measuring the value of nonmarket goods using market data, under either weak neutrality, weak complementarity, or any other preference restriction meeting the requirements discussed in this paper. It has been claimed in a number of places in the literature that numerical methods cannot be used to measure the value of nonmarket goods unless the very restrictive Willig conditions are satisfied. We show that this claim is mistaken, and that numerical methods can be used whether or not the Willig conditions are satisfied. Our numerical methods are more flexible than the existing analytical method because ours can be used with any Marshallian demand system.