The paper first reviews several issues relevant to global food commodity market volatility as it pertains to food security, and food importing developing countries, and then discusses international and national policies and measures to prevent or manage this volatility and related risks. It is...

The book argues that the viability of many observed market and non-market interventions in various countries in agricultural products depends considerably on the underlying behaviour of the relevant commodity markets. Many of these policies have had distortive impacts, resulting in much...

Estimates of technical and scale inefficiencies of tobacco farms in Greece during the period 1991-1995 are obtained by using the parametric approach. The degree of technical efficiency was found to be lower than the degree of scale efficiency and thus a greater portion of overall inefficiency is...

The prices of many staple food commodities have increased substantially over the past year. As a result, many developing countries are facing larger food import bills. The cereal import bill of the world’s poorest countries is forecast to rise by 56 percent in 2007/08, following an already...

Food policy often depends on markets and markets depend on institutions. But how good do institutions have to be before reforms can be launched? Relying on well timed surveys of agricultural prices and a joint study by the Government of Bulgaria and the World Bank on agricultural market...

This comment to the article by de Janvry and Sadoulet highlights the prospects for developing and least developed countries in world food markets. The Author puts the recent agricultural price developments in perspective and suggests what trade policies ought to be implemented to enhance...

The extent to which commodity price volatility affects the income of producing households and their vulnerability to poverty and food insecurity depends on household diversification patterns and the degree of their exposure to markets. This article focuses on estimating agricultural income...

Estimates of technical and scale inefficiencies of fresh fruits farms in Greece during the period 1991-1995 are obtained by using SFA and DEA. The empirical results confirm previous findings for the frequency distributions and the temporal pattern of technical efficiency. Namely, DEA tends to...