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In the long view, recent volatility of prices of the major grains is not anomalous. Wheat, rice, and maize are highly substitutable in the global market for calories, and when aggregate stocks decline to minimal feasible levels, prices become highly sensitive to small shocks, consistent with the economics of storage behavior. In this decade, stocks declined due to high global income growth and biofuels mandates, making markets unusually sensitive to subsequent unanticipated shocks, including biofuels demand boosts in reaction to high petroleum prices, the Australian drought, and other regional grain production problems. To protect their own vulnerable and politically influential consumers, key exporters restricted supplies in 2007, exacerbating the price rise. Understandably, vulnerable importers are now building strategic reserves. To reduce costs and disincentive effects, reserves should have quantitative goals related to targeted distribution to the most vulnerable in severe emergencies. For countries with significant animal feeding or biofuels industries, options contracts to protect the consumption of the most vulnerable from harvest shocks are likely to be more cost-effective than emergency reserves.

AbstractRecent volatility of prices of major grains has generated a wide array of analyses and policy prescriptions that reveal the inability of economists to approach a consensus on the nature of the phenomenon and its implications for policy. This review of market events and their economic interpretations finds that recent price spikes are not as unusual as many discussions imply. Further, the balance between consumption, available supply, and stocks seems to be as relevant for our understanding of these markets as it was decades ago. Though there is much to be learned about commodity markets, the tools at hand are capable of explaining the main forces at work, and of giving good guidance to policymakers confronted with a bewildering variety of expensive policy prescriptions.

We investigate the demand for insurance when contracts are subject, with positive probability, to two distinct types of incomplete performance. When partial performance means payment of some fraction of the indemnity under full performance, the latter exhibits a disappearing deductible. When partial performance is due to insufficient financial capacity, optimal insurance contracts, for any given level of financial capacity, offer full marginal coverage above a deductible. For either type of non‐performance, the optimal deductible under full performance is positive when insurance is offered at an actuarially fair price.