Food Price Policy in an Era of Market Instability: A Political Economy Analysis by Pinstrup-Andersen

Part I
An Overview

1
The Political Economy of Food Price Policy
An Overview
Per Pinstrup-Andersen
1.1 Introduction
How do governments respond to abrupt food price changes and why do they 
respond as they do? Answers to these two questions are important to help us 
understand policy-making, to predict how policy makers are likely to respond 
to future food price volatility and to support policy makers as they confront 
such volatility. This book, which is based on a three-year research project, pro-

vides such answers for fourteen developing countries, the European Union, 
and the USA. Syntheses across country studies draw lessons expected to be 
useful among and beyond the study-countries. The project was undertaken 
by a network of researchers, including the chapter authors, supported by three 
senior advisors (Philip Abbott, William Lyakurwa, and Robert Paarlberg) 
and coordinated by Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Cornell University, and Project 
Director with United Nations University World Institute for Development 
Economics Research (UNU-WIDER); Derrill Watson, Cornell University; 
Finn Tarp, UNU-WIDER; Danielle Resnick, previously UNU-WIDER, now 
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); and Henrik Hansen, 
University of Copenhagen. The network researchers, advisors, and collabora-

tors met at three workshops and interacted frequently through reviews and 
revisions of draft versions of the working papers posted on the UNU-WIDER 
website. The chapters of this book are based on revised and shortened ver-

sions of these working papers.
Food price volatility since 2007 provides a natural experiment for the 
research. While much has been written about the nature, content, and causes 
of these food price fluctuations (e.g., Trostle 2008; Abbott, Hurt, and Tyner 

Food Price Policy in an Era of Market Instability: A Political Economy Analysis by Pinstrup-Andersen