This paper develops an integrated model of the food aid distribution chain, from donor appropriations through operational agency programming decisions to household consumption choices. We use this model to simulate alternative policies and to perform sensitivity analysis to establish how varying...

Recent evidence on malnutrition and poverty raise important questions on the role of food assistance policies and programs. In this review article, we examine evidence on the economic and nutritional impacts of international food assistance programs (FAPs) and policies. The returns on...

Public transfers of food aid are intended largely to support vulnerable populations in times of stress. We use high frequency panel data among Ethiopian and Kenyan pastoralists to test the efficacy of food aid targeting under three different targeting modalities, food aid's responsiveness to...

Local and regional procurement (LRP) of food aid is often claimed to lead to quicker and more cost-effective response. We generate timeliness and cost-effectiveness estimates by comparing US-funded LRP activities in nine countries against in-kind, transoceanic food aid shipments from the US to...

The rise of new food assistance instruments, including local and regional procurement, cash, and vouchers, has surpassed increase in understanding of the tradeoffs among and impacts of these options relative to traditional food aid. Response choices rarely appear to result from systematic...

This paper uses an unprecedentedly rich data set to estimate the cost of agricultural cargo preference (ACP) restrictions on United States food aid programs, and to document some of the programs' competitiveness and national security impacts. ACP cost U.S. taxpayers $140 million in 2006, 46%...

Using survey data from natural experiments in three countries that simultaneously received food aid sourced locally and from the United States, we test the hypothesis that locally-sourced commodities are more culturally appropriate and thus preferred over traditional food aid commodities sourced...

We compare the impacts across a range of criteria of local and regional procurement (LRP) relative to transoceanic shipment of food aid in Burkina Faso and Guatemala. We find that neither instrument dominates the other across all criteria in either country, although LRP commonly performs at...

To date, no research has rigorously addressed the concern that local and regional procurement (LRP) of food aid could affect food prices and food price volatility in food aid source and recipient countries. We assemble spatially and temporally disaggregated data and estimate the relationship...