Suchergebnisse

Beside the mixed evidences on transmission of international food price volatility to local markets and the desirability or otherwise of reliance on stabilisation policy to cushion the effects, very little is known about the key drivers of price spikes and volatility in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper is an attempt to bridge this gap, by focusing on the patterns, drivers, and policy responses to food price spikes and volatility across in Nigeria. The study was based on 16 years panel data on average monthly prices (2001:1 - 2016:12) of major food commodities across local markets in the 36 States of Nigeria, supplemented with monthly series of relevant domestic policy variables, and international prices, among other factors. Data analysis was mainly within the framework of fixed effects models. Findings suggest that food price upsurges in an average Nigeria market is more strongly related to spikes than volatility. International factors such as crude oil price, international food prices, and global beginning stock to use of coarse grains, and domestic policy variables such as real exchange rates, monetary policy rates and narrow money are strong influencers of spikes in the price of one or more food commodities in Nigeria's local markets. Higher petrol price and food production variability may substantially advance price instability in local food markets. Government policy actions at addressing volatile food prices immediately after the 2007/2008 food crises appeared to enhance food price stability. These findings call for greater attention on management of monetary policy, including the exchange rates, ensuring stable petrol price, limiting food production instability, mitigating spill-over of price upsurges from international markets and building farmers and consumer's resilience against food price changes, among others, as important pathways to address short and medium-term food price upsurges.

Domestic policies in Nigeria have been linked to high, volatile, and rising food prices in the country. In light of these linkages, this paper empirically examines the transmission of key monetary policy variables to domestic food prices and the resulting welfare impacts. Estimates of policy-induced price changes from estimated cointegrating relations between commodity prices and policy variables as well as demand elasticities from estimated quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS) of households' consumption expenditures, were employed to estimate the welfare impact (compensating variation) of the policy-induced price changes. The study found that government management of exchange rates and money supplies as well as withdrawal of subsidies on petroleum products have been the main driver of rising food prices in the country. While the average farm household benefited from these price increases, with the mean (median) compensating variation estimated -7.8% (-0.2%) of the household budget, a sizeable proportion (44.1 – 55.5%) of the households suffered welfare losses from various policy induced price changes. These include, notably households of smallholders (14.3 – 84.2%) and female-headed households (34.1 – 62.8%). Overall, while domestic policy actions relating to money supply and subsidy removal were Kaldor–Hicks efficient, exchange rate devaluation was not. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; AGRODEP ; MTID