Increases in the real price of oil not explained by changes in global oil production or by global real demand for commodities are associated with significant increases in economic policy uncertainty. Oil-market specific demand shocks account for 30% of conditional variation in economic policy...

The objective of this study is to identify likely factors driving the 2010 rice price hike and suggest options to manage rice price volatility in the future. Regional trade is likely the main proximate cause for high glutinous rice prices. Trade with Vietnam was likely the main reason for...

Do food prices cause political unrest? Throughout history, riots appear to have frequently broken out as a consequence of high food prices. This paper studies the impact of food prices on political unrest using monthly data on food prices at the international level. Because food prices and...

The general perception is that high food prices in India have increased poverty and that trade reforms will further worsen poverty. We compare Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measures for various scenarios of grain price swings with and without trade reform, using price and income effects for 32...

New estimates of pass-through coefficients for the Middle East and North Africa indicate that a rise of global food prices is transmitted to a significant degree into domestic food prices. Over the past decade, transmission from international to domestic prices has been particularly high for...

The recent inflation in India is special both because of its peaks as also for its persistence. While couple of years back the rising inflation was blamed on global factors, this time around there is no denying the fact that it is due to structural problems of our economy, especially those...

In Ethiopia, changes in the prices of teff, wheat and maize tend to affect more the people at the higher income quintile in rural areas, while in urban areas they tend to affect those at the lower income quintiles. The hike in relative prices from 2006-2007 has increased the urban cost of living...

The paper probed the impact of supply of money on food and general price indices by estimating a series of equations taking CPI food, CPI general, WPI food, WPI general, GDP deflator and SPI as measures of inflation and M1, M2 and M3 supply of money as explanatory variables. For analysis, OLS...

In the wake of the 2008 food crisis, prices of food staples in Senegal rose, with a new wave driven by international price shocks and a decline in productivity; these effects caused sub-optimal performance in the agricultural sector. This paper attempts to identify the implications of these...

This paper investigates the role of oil prices in explaining the dynamics of selected emerging countries exchange rates. Using daily data series, the study concludes that a rise in oil price is leading to a significant appreciation in emerging economies currencies against the US dollar. In our...