We study the impact of plausibly exogenous global food price shocks on local violence across the African continent. In food-producing areas, higher food prices reduce conflict over the control of territory (what we call "factor conflict") and increase conflict over the appropriation of surplus...

Grain shippers and political figures in North Dakota and nearby states have voiced concern that the dramatic increases in shipments of crude oil by rail have caused service delays and higher costs. We investigate the potential impact of crude shipments on grain markets accounting for harvest...

Export taxes, despite being applied by several countries, have not received the same scrutiny in multilateral trade negotiations as other trade barriers. This work seeks to provide more detail into the linkages between export taxes, trade, food prices, and poverty in the agriculture sector. We...

This paper analyzes the short-run trade effects of retaliatory tariffs against agriculture and food exports from the United States. The results indicate that these tariffs caused a substantial decline in U.S. agriculture and food exports and induced a reorientation of international trade...

This paper first considers the impact on world food prices of the changes in restrictions on trade in staple foods during the 2008 world food price crisis. Those changes--reductions in import protection or increases in export restraints--were meant to partially insulate domestic markets from the...

There is widespread concern that the Uruguay Round may reduce the welfare of developing countries through its effect on world agricultural prices. Reduced agricultural price distortions among major supplying nations are predicted to increase basic food prices and decrease some important export...

A large agronomic literature models the implications of climate change for a variety of crops and locations around the world. The goal of the present paper is to quantify the macro-level consequences of these micro-level shocks. Using an extremely rich micro-level dataset that contains...

We quantify the effect of market disruptions due to COVID-19 on the lives of households in rural areas of Liberia and Malawi, utilizing panel data from phone surveys that were implemented as part of a randomized cash transfer experiment. The surveys began collection several months before the...

This paper studies the long-run effects of a "big-push" program providing a large asset transfer to the poorest Indian households. In a randomized controlled trial that follows these households over 10 years, we find positive effects on consumption (0.6 SD), food security (0.1 SD), income (0.3...