IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v3y1989i1p39-65.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Food Aid: A Cause of Development Failure or an Instrument for Success?

Author

Listed:
  • Srinivasan, T N

Abstract

The role of food aid in furthering the economic development of poor countries and in alleviating the adverse effects on the poor of structural and sectoral adjustment programs is discussed. A simple analytical framework for evaluating the incentive and welfare impact of food aid is suggested. Domestic and international markets for food historically have been subject to severe distortions, leading to ever-growing food stocks in some, mainly rich, countries while in others, largely poor, many cannot afford to consume enough food. The possible impact of distortion-free global food markets is sketched. The use of surplus food for payment of wages in rural works programs has often been proposed as a means to create productive assets while alleviating poverty. Using an applied general equilibrium model of the Indian economy, it is shown that a well-designed and efficiently implemented food-for-work program can virtually eliminate abject poverty in India at a modest cost. Experience with food aid in several other countries is also briefly discussed. Copyright 1989 by Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Srinivasan, T N, 1989. "Food Aid: A Cause of Development Failure or an Instrument for Success?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 3(1), pages 39-65, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:3:y:1989:i:1:p:39-65
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Max Blouin & Stéphane Pallage, 2008. "Humanitarian Relief and Civil Conflict," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 52(4), pages 548-565, August.
    2. Jaime Hurtubia Torres & Jutta Neitzel, 2017. "Dependency traps in self-targeting food aid programs," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 147-174, November.
    3. Lavy, Victor, 1990. "Alleviating transitory food crisis in Africa : international altruism and trade," Policy Research Working Paper Series 494, The World Bank.
    4. Jan Fałkowski, 2018. "U.S. food aid and American exports to recipient countries during the Cold War," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(5), pages 659-668, September.
    5. Mkumbwa, Solomon S., 2011. "Cereal food commodities in Eastern Africa: consumption - production gap trends and projections for 2020," MPRA Paper 42113, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. S. Mahendra Dev, 1996. "Experience of India's (Maharashtra) Employment Guarantee Scheme: Lessons for Development Policy," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 14(3), pages 227-254, September.
    7. Abdulai, Awudu & Barrett, Christopher B. & Hazell, Peter, 2004. "Food aid for market development in Sub-Saharan Africa," DSGD discussion papers 5, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    8. Herrmann, Roland & Prinz, Carlo & Schenck, Patricia, 1992. "A Relationship between Food Aid and Food Trade: Theoretical Analysis and Quantitative Results," 1992 Occasional Paper Series No. 6 197872, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. Barrett, Christopher B., 2002. "Food Aid And Commercial International Food Trade," Working Papers 14742, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    10. Lavy, Victor, 1990. "Does food aid depress food production? The disincentive dilemma in the African context," Policy Research Working Paper Series 460, The World Bank.
    11. Colding, Bjorg & Pinstrup-Andersen, Per, 1999. "Denmark's contribution to the world food programme: a success story," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 93-108, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:3:y:1989:i:1:p:39-65. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.